ROKUGAN- Oriental Adventures

[Dr_Sage]

No by deadly, I mean, that katana hits you, you're going to roll a new character. It does not sprain your ankle. It does not cause you to sever an arm. It causes you to either die, or be at such a disadvantage that defending yourself becomes a non-issue.

The game was -very- lethal.

The idea was that, facing such a certainty of death, coupled with the knowledge that your soul could be reincarnated, allowed you to approach death with the tragic heroism of a samurai, facing death, not the power fantasy heroism of D&D.

By death, in this case, represented by the loss of the character, right? I do see your point. Specially after having played Role Master, HARP, and the all mighty Shadow Run.

In those matters you are probably 100% right, as DnD does not trive in game lethality at all (specilally 4ed).

What I meant was: in my opinion, the "hit" in DnD 4Ed game terms does not necessary mean your enemy blade touched you.

By the same token: a "miss" on a daily power usually means that you hurt someone.

One of the best examples from the big screem I can think of is the Ector vs Achiles fight in Troy. If you look at the fight closely, and if you imagine the rounds passing by as Hector gets more and more exausted, with only minor wounds (loosing his HP from Sword, Spear and Shield attacks). The only solid his Achiles got was the one that disabled Hector (zero HP in game terms).

And by no means in "real life" a Spear master would say to you that you can survive various spear attacks, compreende?

Same thing I can observe in my country... I live in Rio de Janeiro, and unfortunately we do have a high amount of gunfire around here. Sometimes we see 20 police officers exchanging fire with 20 drug dealers... in the middle f a high populated favela. Thousants of bullets fired (meaning hundreads of attacks in game terms), but usually a handfull of people dead, and some wounded. We all know that no human being would survive those "attacks", in the same way noone would survive katana attacks.

But RPGs "attacks", specially D20, are very abstract ones.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Right. It is pretty much encouraged by 4e to look at 'damage' as pretty abstract. You're getting tired, get nicked, lose confidence, the enemy figures out your weaknesses, you expend luck, etc. The other guys sword probably only touches your flesh once, when you go down.

Besides, katana masters wanting to be obtuse aside it is certainly possible to be hit and wounded and not killed in real life. It may not be the most common situation but it is far from highly unusual. Remember, these guys were also often wearing armor. It might have been lighter in construction than late medieval/post-medieval European plate armor, but it wasn't exactly nothing or they'd have not bothered. Damage from hits could easily be accounted as bruises or more serious but non-fatal damage. A glancing blow or just one that your helmet absorbs most of but leaves you weakened etc.

4e combat system can work fine for it. Actually if you design your NPC Samurai monsters correctly and fluff the fight well it will be fine.

The real interesting question is how to handle other stuff. I'd go through the OA book and see how those mechanics work. They CAN be translated pretty well into a 4e format where they are all ability score and defense based with skills being applicable to most situations. Social standing can be ripped off pretty close to intact from OA but just adjust things so CHA mods and possibly certain skills factor into gains and losses. I'd think most more elaborate social situations will involve an SC that impacts on your standing.

Really should be pretty easy to home brew. Honestly I haven't seen where anyone has done it, though there have been various people talking about it now and then.

 

[DracoSuave]

4e combat system can work fine for it.

No it really can't.

L5R's combat is based on the idea of characters facing death that can occur at -any time.- Character death is not a game-ender, the soul often moves on to a different character through the cycle of reincarnation.

Death, however, is final. There's no ressurection outside of the foulness of the Taint and Blood Magic... and those hits don't just abstractly represent themselves as easily removed damage points... they cripple you in a direct manner.

Unless your character starts with 10 hitpoints and faces enemies who deal 1d10+10 damage, or every consecutive hit reduces your AC and damage by a substantial amount, the system cannot accurately model Legend of the Five Rings.

Not to mention, the social system in L5R is way more developed, and even more important than the combat.

It's like comparing a general system that's designed to represent dungeon crawls, and comparing it to a system custom made for a specific fiction. It requires a lot of patch-work and there's no guarantee of success. Whereas, the tailor-made system works perfectly.

It'll be half-assed, and you're cheating yourself out of the world experience. It'd be like watching Band of Brothers, and having John Woo-directed action scenes. It's just not right.

That said, if the goal is just an oriental game, just name everything asian names and you're good to go; the core game's actually very wuxia.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

It is totally a matter of taste. If you want L5R then you can do that, but I wouldn't call either it or some variation of 4e or reflavoring of things in 4e as better or worse. It can be just as thematic if you want it to be. L5R has its strengths and weaknesses as a system too. There are stories it will work well for and others it won't. L5R is great for mostly intrigue based games of political maneuvers and whatnot. It isn't that great as a system for fighting inhuman monsters.

I still think you can pretty easily graft something like the social features of L5R onto 4e. Take a look at the Shadow Court module Wolfgang Bauer put out recently (a community project) which takes place in the court of the Shadow Fey. It has an entire reputation system which works pretty well. It isn't as fleshed out as what L5R has, but it is only designed to handle things in that particular adventure. The approach taken can easily be generalized though. I'd not really find it all that hard to run an oriental type court intrigue using it for instance.

 

[Dr_Sage]

So, I will take Draco's word regarding lethality.

But about social interactions, I feel that Lo5R has more skills, but they can be translated.

Trick would be the way DnD sees the "other"... the miscelaneous skills.... like the Origami thecniques or even the Tea Cerimony. Those skills do have some in game effects that DnD really don't have.

I am considering writting them on the characters sheets even if they don't have numeric effects.

Somehow seems better to just trust my players to use them, even without "benefits".

One particulat aspect of the original Rokugan I don't think I can translate very well: The Iaijutsu Duel. It was reasonably translated in the 3ED version of DnD, but for 4th edition I have to think a LOT about it to try to make it right. Would probably have to work like the extra dice system of the sneak attack.

It would be EASY to translate it to the HARP system tho.

 

[Ryujin]

No by deadly, I mean, that katana hits you, you're going to roll a new character. It does not sprain your ankle. It does not cause you to sever an arm. It causes you to either die, or be at such a disadvantage that defending yourself becomes a non-issue.

The game was -very- lethal.

The idea was that, facing such a certainty of death, coupled with the knowledge that your soul could be reincarnated, allowed you to approach death with the tragic heroism of a samurai, facing death, not the power fantasy heroism of D&D.

"The way of the Samurai is found in death."

In film terms 4e is more suited to recreating a Chuck Norris film, than it is an Akira Kurosawa movie like "Yojimbo."

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Is it really not just a sort of refluffed kind of fighting. Each Samurai tries to psych out the other one until finally one flinches a tiny bit and his opponent draws and strikes like lightning. I think you could add a feat to be really good at it. The other guy can refuse to play THAT game, but it could have social or other repercussions.

 

[DracoSuave]

The problem is that 4e is designed for a style of combat that involves fluctuating fortunes, with the assumption that the players are going to come out on top, where injuries or combat has no consequence of note until the end.

L5R is designed for a style of combat that involves imminent death, where there IS no 'let the healer sort it out'... if you're in combat, someone will die, and quickly. That suits the 'first to flinch' style combat you describe, and it even has a mechanic for doing that in the iaijutsu duel. The d20 kludge didn't even come close to Focus Focus Strike.

Taking a feat isn't the same as using a system -designed- to do it properly from the get go.

This is without going into the 4e magic system, which is very good for 4e play, and terrible for Legend of the Five Rings shugenja, because it is completely incapable of the Five Rings part. That's as important to the setting as the samurai are.

 

[Dr_Sage]

Thanks for all the insights guys.


What do you think about social interaction. Can 4ed hold it well?

 

[Dr_Sage]

Oh! I forgot!

Another question to the more experienced: assuming not every character is supposed to be a "katana/Iajutsu" master, how you fellows usually dealt with interactions that could result in a duel?

No matter the system we use- I think - there will be 1 or 2 duelists in any party. The others would be social experts, religious experts, magic and taint experts and so on...

How - in game - a Shugenja, for example, deal with this kind of issue?