How do you play a Samurai?

[BSF]

The inertial armor is mostly because, at the outset of the game, the character is a long way from home, and traveling fairly light. No armor, just his weapons and basic supplies.
The game went well. I decided to go with a kind of gruff personality, but still very well meaning. He's kind of latched into the other obvious outsider in the group, and is serving as akind of bodygaurd for that character at present. he has been slightly at odds with some of the group, since he is more selfless, but all in all, things went great.
Thanks for all the advice.

Yes! the game did go well.

Even if there wasn't too much action yet. Still getting started and all that. It is a shame that one of the other players was absent, I think you would have found him to be closer in a belief system. Maybe we can wrap the group more onto the hero's path with your influence.

Anyway, I appreciate everyone's input here too. I really want to have a good grasp on how Macbeth will be striving to portray his character so I can try to feed appropriate circumstances for him to shine out a bit. He is coming from a far off land that I have never really fleshed out. As a result, I am leaving a lot of it up to Macbeth to mold into whatver style he wants to play.

 

[Wombat]

I'm curious as to why you believe the Book of Five Rings is considered laughable?

Perhaps you should consider contributing which resources we should study with regards to the early forms of Samurai.

I don't find Bo5R laughable, I just find it very silly that people use this book (written after 1600) as the basis for their characters who otherwise seem to drawn inspirations from pre-Shogunate Wars era.

Personally, I find the best books for understanding the time, place, and attitudes of the samurai are not books specifically about samurai, per se, but are important to Japanese literature: The Tale of Genji and Tales of the Heike. They are the classics that are necessary to understand the culture in wider terms, instead of just the post-Tokugawa vision of what samurai used to be like.

This is basically the difference between reading a series of letters from the American Civil War and watching Glory -- the latter, while a truly excellent film, is more a product of the late 20th century, with our ideals and values, rather than of the mid-19th century.

 

[Dogbrain]

I tend to play them as fuzzy-faced, hard-drinking, Kurosawa-esque crotchety sorts. There is a lot of leeway within the "Samurai" archetype, a lot that doesn't filter through to the West very often.

In the ideal, I would say the following might work:

"Face" is everything.
Loyalty is everything.
Duty is everything.
Honorability is everything.
Status is everything.

When any of the above conflict, kill somebody or kill yourself.