D&D General Story Now, Skilled Play, and Elephants

[clearstream]

Well, it is quite possible that we were using different interpretations of the rules too. They are VERY complex and quite obtuse. I don't think there was much editing and when I go back and look at them there's a lot of stuff that I'm just like "I have no idea how this is supposed to work." It is kind of on a par with original D&D in that sense, and there aren't a lot of explanations of how the whole combat process as a whole WORKS. Clearly the author assumed readers would "just know" a lot of stuff!

So, it is quite possible you guys have interpreted things in a really different way than the GM (IIRC his name was 'Bill') did way back in 1978. I can say that in his interpretation it was QUITE common for a Samurai to get so many bonus actions right off the start line to just murderize the whole party before they even got their turns.

Ah right, the zanshin rules, I think it was. You set up a character to get extra moves. And maybe they then also get to go first? It's been awhile!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Ah right, the zanshin rules, I think it was. You set up a character to get extra moves. And maybe they then also get to go first? It's been awhile!

Right, and then they can use Iaijitsu and some other techniques that amplify your damage and whatnot. I'd have to go back and reread it, but by the time you get a couple levels you can basically draw your weapon and blenderize before anyone else can blink.

I suspect that in the case of the campaign @Thomas Shey is talking about, either they players eschewed combat much, or they had a couple of these devils on their side (it sure cuts both ways) or maybe they played some characters that used other tactics. I seem to remember that my Ninja dude would kind of hide in the rafters, spit a couple poison darts, toss a bunch of flashbangs around and then leave, which did rather thwart the bushi types to a degree. Still, one mistake and things can get nasty in a hurry. Honestly, it was probably not too unrealistic in a sense!

This is a thing though. I mean, Traveller, depending on how you play it, can run into the same sort of problem. A PGMP-12 doesn't even leave ashes behind, and a guy with heavy weapons and power armor training can pretty much toast anything that isn't similarly equipped. Of course PCs rarely score that type of gear, it is completely illicit, etc. Since you don't actually gain anything akin to experience in that game its sort of a matter of time before that, or a nuke tipped ship-to-ship missile does for you. Obviously it pays to avoid violence in that game, but at some point the game kind of stagnates and just goes there.

This is one reason I think a strong agenda can be helpful. I mean, Bushido with a strong agenda, or likewise Traveller, would probably be a lot more interesting games, though perhaps less widely appealing. Hard to say for sure.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Right, and then they can use Iaijitsu and some other techniques that amplify your damage and whatnot. I'd have to go back and reread it, but by the time you get a couple levels you can basically draw your weapon and blenderize before anyone else can blink.

I suspect that in the case of the campaign @Thomas Shey is talking about, either they players eschewed combat much, or they had a couple of these devils on their side (it sure cuts both ways) or maybe they played some characters that used other tactics. I seem to remember that my Ninja dude would kind of hide in the rafters, spit a couple poison darts, toss a bunch of flashbangs around and then leave, which did rather thwart the bushi types to a degree. Still, one mistake and things can get nasty in a hurry. Honestly, it was probably not too unrealistic in a sense!

It wouldn't have been possible for non-spellcasters to both avoid combat and advance; Bushido split experience into Shugo (which applied to Shugenja (mages) and Gakusho (priests)) and Budo (which applied to everyone else). Budo was acquired almost exclusively through kills (which went to whoever struck the killing blow, to the point I still hear some people who played in those campaigns joke about someone "stealing the budo" when they'd been ineffective in a combat until they managed to get in the kill.

My guess would be that they only rarely ran into samurai with the necessary skills to pull off those sort of effects, and probably later in the day; there were a wide variety of opponents who were far from that dangerous (including most of the two varieties of mooks).

In other words, it was either overuse, or (if using the random encounter generation tables) bad luck of the die throwing up one of the most deadly opponents. Not a problem in those days that could be limited to Bushido.

 

[pemerton]

one mistake and things can get nasty in a hurry. Honestly, it was probably not too unrealistic in a sense!

This is a thing though. I mean, Traveller, depending on how you play it, can run into the same sort of problem. A PGMP-12 doesn't even leave ashes behind, and a guy with heavy weapons and power armor training can pretty much toast anything that isn't similarly equipped. Of course PCs rarely score that type of gear, it is completely illicit, etc. Since you don't actually gain anything akin to experience in that game its sort of a matter of time before that, or a nuke tipped ship-to-ship missile does for you. Obviously it pays to avoid violence in that game, but at some point the game kind of stagnates and just goes there.

In my Classic Traveller game I am just ignoring nuclear weapons. I think they add nothing to the game except the problems you identify. As far as ship-to-ship missiles are concerned, we just use the regular Book 2 ones. Space combat is already bad enough, in the sense that the cost to repair even minor damage to a ship is in the millions of credits. From memory we've had three space combats in 20+ sessions: in one the PCs defeated an enemy vessel; in one they abandoned their vessel and ended up being able to steal the NPCs'; and in the third they suffered one hit (to the vessel formerly belonging to the NPCs) before being able to escape, and had to sell the orbital laboratory that was one of the ship's vehicles in order to pay for the repairs to their damaged M-drive.

We do have one PC who has Battle Dress and a PGMP-13, but no Battle Dress skill (only Vacc Suit) which means that he risks injury when he discharges the heavy energy weapon. So far he's only done it once. Obviously if the PCs ever found themselves attacked by a troop of Imperial Marines similarly equipped they'd just all be dead: I keep this in mind when I'm framing encounters and conflicts in the game!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

It wouldn't have been possible for non-spellcasters to both avoid combat and advance; Bushido split experience into Shugo (which applied to Shugenja (mages) and Gakusho (priests)) and Budo (which applied to everyone else). Budo was acquired almost exclusively through kills (which went to whoever struck the killing blow, to the point I still hear some people who played in those campaigns joke about someone "stealing the budo" when they'd been ineffective in a combat until they managed to get in the kill.

My guess would be that they only rarely ran into samurai with the necessary skills to pull off those sort of effects, and probably later in the day; there were a wide variety of opponents who were far from that dangerous (including most of the two varieties of mooks).

In other words, it was either overuse, or (if using the random encounter generation tables) bad luck of the die throwing up one of the most deadly opponents. Not a problem in those days that could be limited to Bushido.

I don't honestly recall much about playing casters. Aside from 'Kung Fu', the David Carradine TV show, where the the main character doesn't particularly evince any sort of mystical powers and beats everyone up, there really was nothing but Samurai and Ninja, and maybe a smattering of Yakuza as tropes that anyone in the US understood. Nobody could even tell you what a 'shukenja' or 'gakusho' was, let alone wanted to play it! Not saying they don't look like interesting character types to my eye today, but in 1978 we were 16, shallow, and wanted to kill things with curved swords, basically.

I suspect the people you are referring to simply played a bunch differently from that. My experience with Samurai in that game is that, unless you really built a sub-optimal character, you were kind of a combat monster after a few levels and out of everyone else's league in that department. So, NPCs, same way, if the GM unleashed such on you, you better run. Yes, there were 'mooks' and killing them was a cheap way to get XP, but also generated a lot of enemies, as the setting is after all one of a highly cultured, but violent, society where making enemies is both a bad idea, and inevitable.

Anyway, all I can say is, the campaign I played in was very interesting, to me at that time, but also super lethal. Surviving to even get one level of 'budo' was hard, and only a few players managed to ever hit level 3. I left after a couple years, but I think the GM eventually ran out of players and went back to running D&D or something.

If I was going to run a game of that ilk today, I'd consider starting with FitD and building a game based on clan/family competition and infighting. It could probably heavily mirror the factions architecture of games like BitD, but with different flavor and such. I'm not sure how much magic really belongs in such a game, at least at the PC level. Various types of spirits and such certainly factor a lot in stories, but they are generally defeated without resorting to 'magic' per se. A Shinto priest might be a sort of NPC you bring in to deal with specific problems, or perform necessary rituals, etc. and maybe to act as a patron. Certainly in later Medieval Japan the Buddhist institutions are more political than religious and might simply be considered factions unto themselves. As they tended to be egalitarian their fighters were a bit differently trained and equipped than the bushi, but not that much different.

Anyway, I wouldn't use Bushido, it is overly complex, probably not all that accurate a depiction to start with culturally, and just plain clunky and posessing all the characteristics of traditional GM-centered games of its time period. Reading over it now, I can see that the author was deeply engaged with the subject matter, but the game design feels amateurish and frankly obsolete. It would probably be best if some Japanese people actually wrote this type of game instead of some Americans who can at best claim 2nd hand knowledge of the material anyway.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

In my Classic Traveller game I am just ignoring nuclear weapons. I think they add nothing to the game except the problems you identify. As far as ship-to-ship missiles are concerned, we just use the regular Book 2 ones. Space combat is already bad enough, in the sense that the cost to repair even minor damage to a ship is in the millions of credits. From memory we've had three space combats in 20+ sessions: in one the PCs defeated an enemy vessel; in one they abandoned their vessel and ended up being able to steal the NPCs'; and in the third they suffered one hit (to the vessel formerly belonging to the NPCs) before being able to escape, and had to sell the orbital laboratory that was one of the ship's vehicles in order to pay for the repairs to their damaged M-drive.

We do have one PC who has Battle Dress and a PGMP-13, but no Battle Dress skill (only Vacc Suit) which means that he risks injury when he discharges the heavy energy weapon. So far he's only done it once. Obviously if the PCs ever found themselves attacked by a troop of Imperial Marines similarly equipped they'd just all be dead: I keep this in mind when I'm framing encounters and conflicts in the game!

Right, it isn't all bad. In fact it is a bit 'realistic' in the sense that any society where a few individuals can operate with little probability of disaster no matter what they do would soon devolve into total chaos. So, unless you posit a basically lawless milieu then at best PCs might be able to get away with some stuff for a while, or perhaps ingratiate themselves with the power structure to a degree and skate around the worst of it. At least until their patrons decide they are too much of a liability!

I don't think it is hard to do in Traveller, though it seems like the party inevitably lives on the edge. As you say, repairs to ships are astronomically expensive. So space combat is not really much of an option except as a last resort kind of thing. I suspect it is reasonable to conceive of nuclear missiles as a thing that is not schlepped around by civilians or even police, given their obvious drawbacks if falling into the wrong hands. The books don't really say, but my approach was "If you are stupid enough to attack an Azhanti High Lightning class Imperial battlecruiser, it will just dust you off with a nuke, have fun." Your average 800 ton heavy police/local military type vessel? Probably doesn't carry a nuke at all, if it does its in the hold under lock and key and the captain lacks authority to deploy it.

I seem to remember I ran a couple of mercenary campaigns where the PCs got to handle some of the nastier weapons here and there, but they never OWNED them. Nor did they fight anyone that was equally well-equipped as it would be a blood bath! If you get into Striker and High Guard stuff, where the really serious military hardware lives, well, Imperial troops with Tech 15 Grav Tanks armed with rapid-fire FGMPs and such are pretty much starships flying around on the ground! And the REAL Imperial navy ships mass up in the 100k ton and up category, sport terawatt energy weapons, 1000's of turrets, bay weapons, etc.

 

[Campbell]

I think I'm just used to more lethal games. I had my personal settings calibrated by Vampire, RuneQuest, Burning Wheel, Apocalypse World and have never really been much into attrition. Our games usually do not have many fights, but they are usually pretty high stakes affairs.

I did really appreciate Exalted Third Edition's middle ground on lethality though.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think I'm just used to more lethal games. I had my personal settings calibrated by Vampire, RuneQuest, Burning Wheel, Apocalypse World and have never really been much into attrition. Our games usually do not have many fights, but they are usually pretty high stakes affairs.

I did really appreciate Exalted Third Edition's middle ground on lethality though.

I haven't played it. However it seems like within that milieu you could kind of build a 'pick your lethality' sort of game. Same with maybe something like a 'Court Intrigue' game. Do you engage in lethal covert war to reach the pinnacle of power at any cost? Get into deadly duels at the drop of a hat? Or do you spend your time wining and dining the elite and investigating corruption? I think that might be one of the deals with the Bushido thing too, if you stick more to the less bloody side of politics, you've picked a less lethal sort of play.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I think I'm just used to more lethal games. I had my personal settings calibrated by Vampire, RuneQuest, Burning Wheel, Apocalypse World and have never really been much into attrition. Our games usually do not have many fights, but they are usually pretty high stakes affairs.

I did really appreciate Exalted Third Edition's middle ground on lethality though.

This was kind of my reaction, since this was also a period when we'd played RQ and things like Aftermath. You didn't lose people all the time, but you did lose them with some regularity.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I haven't played it. However it seems like within that milieu you could kind of build a 'pick your lethality' sort of game. Same with maybe something like a 'Court Intrigue' game. Do you engage in lethal covert war to reach the pinnacle of power at any cost? Get into deadly duels at the drop of a hat? Or do you spend your time wining and dining the elite and investigating corruption? I think that might be one of the deals with the Bushido thing too, if you stick more to the less bloody side of politics, you've picked a less lethal sort of play.

As far as I know, a big part of the games I saw reference to were hunting monsters and bandits.