The Way of Sensei Wu

I've made no mystery my first goal with this game was to crash test a certain number of mechanics. Some worked well, others not so much, all in all it has been quite an instructive run. My own impression on what belongs in each category will follow... As soon as I'm done writing it as it's turning out to be quite the doorstopper.

However, the point of view of a GM is extremely different from the point of view of players, so I'm super eager to how they were actually perceived and received, in good or bad, by you, the players. Hence why I'm looking forward for for reports (not necessarily as verbose) of your own, and discussion on how to improve what went wrong.

Note: If there have thoughts about the game you would like to share, but for any reason would rather not be made public, just drop them in your private forum instead.

First: I appreciated the amount of time that went into combing through and listing advantages/disadvantages/techniques for every event. That was a lot.

Speaking of events, I did appreciate the way topping up void/eliminating strife and fatigue at the start of each one simplified bookkeeping. The Focus for action economy was interesting. The page of possible actions was a bit daunting initially, but clearly laid out and manageable once some focus could be applied.

I also liked events as "this is stuff you're pursuing over the course of the day," since it offered some framing for threads if I was having trouble deciding what to set up.

I really liked the information economy overall. Tidbits seemed like a neat way to manage information flow. When GMing there are certain bits of information that get tagged as necessary. Those are usually pretty easy to get out into circulation via planned drops. But the smaller things can be easy to be too coy about in NPC interactions, but feel heavy-handed if just dropped in the weather posts or something. This allowed folks to decide if they wanted to look for them and a decent way to sprinkle them around. I appreciated the tailoring on them as well. Given this character, I decided early on to prioritize information over learning to hit things with sticks, so I may be biased here.

I'm going to echo a lot of what Naoko has said, honestly, and note that TPO Kindaichi and I are likely going to be borrowing a lot of what you've done here. Linking the number of available actions in an event to the Focus score seems sensible, although a way to get "bonus" actions might be a useful add-on for later games--and in a more courtly setting, Status and Glory should probably come into play a bit more (but this was not a courtly setting, as such, so the lack makes sense here--and, again, this is a test-run, so it's not a complaint).

Running the combat is a time-sink, I know, and the PC-cap is a good thing for it with one GM. I'm working on a way to put more of the mechanics on the player for small-scale events, but it'll be a test-run, as well.

XP curve and awards will likely take some figuring out...but, as noted, it's a test, and we're still figuring out how to make 5e pbp work well.

Thank you for letting me play in this!

So I agree with a lot of what is said above (some of which I've already discussed with our Scorpion).

I also really like Focus dictating how many rolls you get in an event. The last 5e game I ran "Mud Builds" (3 Earth 3 Water) swiftly became dominant because the deep composure pool along with picking your ring meant you could easily keep multiple exploding strife chains while those with small composure would have to unmask...which typically does need some kind of penalty to keep them from making composure meaningless. It'll take a little mental gymnastics to fit the idea into all events. For example, at an archery competition getting to shoot more arrows is a bit weird if it's not speed shooting, but it's still workable (Some of you have a chance to say a few words to the judge because you're just so darn speedy). Definitely something that should be adopted.

When I joined the game I was very against refilling void at the start of every event. This was mostly a carryover from void being so godly in 4e. "Oh surely, some void 3 guy is just going to come into every event, choose void as his ring for every check and void bomb every roll". And I know people love spending void points, but I kinda like them being rare, 'ok I really dig deep here' moments rather, than 'Eh, I've got a void point, may as well spend it." However, when you combine this with the focus action economy above it actually really make a lot more builds really interesting. I'd probably patch some flashy name on void being recovered on entering events "Crossroads of Destiny" or something and be pretty happy with it.

Strife recovery, on the other hand.....is something I need to think on a bit more. Bundling events off into a non-time zone, and refilling composure to full for them meant that strife had 0 effect outside of events. That's maybe a bit too gentle for my tastes, I think if you push yourself to the limit doing something, it's pretty natural to be mentally fatigued. Plus I like passions restoring composure because it gives you another reasons to do a scene and show off your passion. That being said, people HATE tracking strife from day to day (I mean I don't, but I'm a person, not people). Maybe I'll just stick with "Back to 50%" each time slot, and recovery 3 for a passion in a time slot (Without rolling) and add just clear it upon day change. Putting events back into timeslots would be you could be a little bit fatigued after an event, and probably shouldn't do anything too strenuous in the time slots before it.

Information tidbits is definitely a good use for opportunities and a good way to give characters something to talk about. (I tried to slip what I learned into conversations when I could). The issue of duplicate results is something to consider, especially in a larger player count game. I think the gm did a great job with just on the fly "Oh if you get the same result, you learn more about it." but that might get a little tiresome with a bigger player count. Then again, do you really want to come up with 100 tidbits for a game since so many would likely be unseen? I think what I might do is come up with a daily information tidbit chart, and if you hit the same result again, you get a tidbit from a previous day's chart that you had missed. Hmmmmm, or maybe do something where it's like clear which NPC is tied to which number, and allow PCs to spend opportunities to adjust the table result so they can get something about someone they want to learn more about rather than learning that iggy the fish merchant really likes red beans. Definitely something to keep developing.

Now on the subject of lots of information, events listing every advantage, disadvantage, kakta, shuji and technique....man that was a lot of work for you just to get two books worth in, nevermind opening up the other books. Talked to our Scorpion about a way to simplify that, but she hated it thematically, (even if mechanically it'd be very easy to balance), so I might have to go with her suggestion of spreadsheeting the events, and then as people submit their characters, adding them into the events and tracking how many times a given advantage, disadvantage, tech, kata, shuji comes up and tweaking events a bit to balance it out. Still a lot of work, on a time crunch, but still a bit easier than transcribing every book's information into every event

Overall, I think the game really helps with developing 5e into pbp, and I'm glad I joined in and was here to learn. Thanks!

Here's my own, raw (mostly redacted before people posted here), impressions. I'm probably forgetting quite a few things, but long enough as it is. Also, I'm already starting to forget about the parts of the game I didn't take notes of live (this was an urban fantasy game right?):


The good

Daily full recovery of strife, fatigue, and Void points

Didn't seem to cause any issue in term of balance, and made management of these three scores much smoother.

Advantages (and disadvantages) not requiring a matching element to apply

Advantages and disadvantages are what make a character a character, and they already don't apply that often due to there being so many of them. So adding an elemental restriction on top of that felt like too much.

Restricted opportunities

Limiting opportunities' spending to just two options as a default was most likely the right call, as I was reminded the instant I had to look at the opportunity tables during the Conflict events. I felt it made for rolls that flowed more smoothly, instead of each being a puzzle of its own.

Said two options being "cancel strife on a 1-1 basis" and "add up points for some indirect benefits" was also likely the most straightforward way to go. How to handle said indirect benefits is however very much an open debate.

Balancing the five rings

The game seemed balanced to me in regard of how important each ring was. Composure, i.e. Earth+Water, and Focus, i.e. Air+Fire, appeared to balance each other in events, each limiting the number of actions that could be taken in its own ways, and a higher Void regenation made Void more relevant too.

While I'm not sure the way Focus was used during this game was the best one, I think having it play some sort of active role in events is required for events to be balanced on their own.

Restricting character creation options

I know it can be frustrating to not have access to one's pet minor clan or school available. However, at a point no one, GMs included, is fluent with 5ed rules in a PbP context, trying to deal with all the schools, all the techniques, all the advantages and disadvantages, all the extra gimmicks, all that at once, is just too much. A lot of things are doomed to be forgotten, neglected, misunderstood, making for a disagreeable experience for all the players who have them on their sheets and the GM who has to deal with their discontentment live during the game.

Day 3 event

I like how this event turned. I think it had a bit of everything in it, allowing everyone to show off, while keeping a strong and consistent fluff encouraging good narrative posts. Likely still a bit too much on the complex side, but only by a small margin this time.

Fluff strife for fluff rolls

All consequences of a fluff roll should be fluffy, in good or bad, and I don't see why strife (or Void points) should be an exception here.

Using techniques during events

I'm very happy to have found ways to include (some) Invocations and Rituals during events proper instead of writing "Magic is not allowed" everywhere.

This is of course required for balance, as magical samurai have been heavily nerfed in 5th ed and cutting them of their magic just puts them at an unfair disadvantage. But also, I think it's pretty pleasant to have your weird fluffy abilities supported by the game, even when what they do is not really better than the mundane way for balance reasons.

Threads being grouped by day rather than by location

Worked well, like it did in the LBS games.

I'll even hazard such a structure would work fine for month-long games, but not a hill I'm willing to die on.

Intrigue events

There are things to improve but I'm relatively happy with how the Day 4 Intrigue event turned out, and I do think Intrigue has potential as a PbP mechanic. They're a bit complex to set up, but run rather smoothly once in place (as opposed to fights, that require almost constant GM's input), and scratch an itch players are naturally looking for in a PbP (speak, argue, debate).

I would advise to keep them full cooperative or semi-cooperative though. 5th ed rules encourages "preying on the weak" (example: Vigilance reduced to 1 when Compromised in top of the other penalties of Compromised), and thus allowing players to roll against each other directly might turn sour quickly.


Flawed but interesting

Acquiring items

Verbose enough to have been an event of its own (in which case I'll advise adding in an option for non-Commerce Trade skills; likely just the Commerce one with +1TN), but I think this can give ideas to other GMs on how to deal with such issues. I tried to keep things as per the book as possible while still adding in a balance that wasn't there originally.

Direct references to rules

Having threads to list all the weird rules, i.e. This and that, is very unlikely to not be a good idea.

However, what's an even greater idea is linking to these rule points from within events that reference them. The Internet is a web, hyperlinks are what tie it all together.

Horses and attendants

Too many schools have them to simply brush them away but I'm only mildly happy with how they were handled this game.

Horses were dealt with by having them grant skilled assistance to certain Survival rolls in specific events, which I feel is a good compromise, and consistent with the rules on pages 326-327 of Core.

And, in retrospect, attendants should probably have been handled with the same explicit logic instead of me trying to craft a confusing general rule for them. Like, burning down this and have the following instead:

Some book research
TN3 Theology
Attendants can grant assistance* to that check. This assistance is Skilled if the attendant is a Sage or a Spiritualist, and unskilled otherwise.

*Insert here a link to a blurb about assistance in the Rule clarifications thread as per the point just above.

Explicit design is also a good way to keep attendants balanced, as assistance is a powerful bonus.

Doing some actions more that once

Case-by-case basis for when it was actually a good idea this game, but with both Focus and Composure already limiting the total number of actions a PC can do each event, I think allowing players to focus on some actions in particular is fine.

Tidbits

Oh, that one is complex.

Tidbits were initially designed as a band-aid. I had canned the very first version of the game, the one dating from September of last year, for many reasons, but one is important here: The events were exactly what I often reproach in other games, a litany of dice rolls granting some points for a distant conclusion and no correlation with the rest of the setting except for a bit of flavor. Ludonarrative dissonance to the max to use the big words.

When I returned to the drawing board after a six months hiatus, I found myself facing my past mistakes and quite aware remaking the events from scratch just wasn't an option.

So I introduced the Tidbits as a way to "casually" interact with the setting while doing events without having to revise the events themselves too much. This was relatively easy of an addition as Information points already existed at the time, though they were then just another score to keep track through the game without effect before endgame.

The results were all over the place but not uninteresting.

There are definitely many, many, things to fix, a lot of which are a direct consequence of the out of control randomness (I think #8 was seen a billion times and a few showed at most once). I also suspect the totally private nature of the personalized Tidbits had indirect consequences on the game's health too (what doesn't happen in a public thread just doesn't happen). In hindsight, I should probably have gone for a mixed approach with the Tidbit setup being public and only a few extra information hidden in private forums. Oh, and there were also writing issues about how indirect the information were, but this is something I already discuss elsewhere.

However, it does seem like they managed to fulfill their role? People seemed happy to earn them, and they did help paint the setting, bit by bit.

Interactions with NPCs

Not the part of any game I'm the most comfortable with, either as a player or as a GM.

Encounters between PCs and NPCs of all kind (from the ones who have portraits to created on-the-fly side characters) always seem to randomly drift between "nothing will happen whatsoever as to not spoil a later event or giving an unfair edge to the characters who talked to NPCs as opposed to those who couldn't, and everyone will leave frustrated" and "if you don't talk to NPCs, nothing will happen to your character except for whatever you brought to the game on your own, so I hope you have synchronized minds and timezones with the GMs".

Randomly, as in, with no way to know in advance in which category they will belong even with as much OOC communication as possible, as there are just too many factors involved, from the way the game was designed at the very beginning to how tired people will be on both sides at the first and most decisive exchange of words.

I'm certainly not satisfied with how the NPCs were managed this game, but I'll put this in the mixed side of my report, as some interesting things did arise from these conversations, and it has been a learning experience at least on my side.

Character creation

I believe that, game after game, we're improving on that front to make it less of a pain. There's an agreement over the fact heritage can be rolled first, it was probably a good idea to allow players to register using "Excel" character spreadsheets for this game (the GM can just make a copy at character creation to keep a reference of what was), and I would say by the next game we should be able to write a nice help document for that (things like "pick advantages and disadvantages that fit your fancy, then strip it down to a list of five, with at least one of each type").


The bad

Complexity of events

I wanted to test a lot of things during this game, but I really went overboard, to the point of skewing the experiment. Events, in particular the Day 1 and Day 2 ones, should have been shorter and more focused.

Some ideas to keep roughly the same balance while alleviating events:
Moving secondary mechanisms (divination, etc.) outside of events (see below).
Less total options, more (interesting) repeatable options.
Merge similar suboptions.
Adjusting starting stats to reduce the number of dice rolls altogether without messing balance. For example, events only allowing Focus-2 actions (min: 1), and having characters starting "tired" (3 strife, 3 fatigue, one less Void point than max).

Tournament structure

I used the classic "tally up points for a reward at the end" structure as it was the most common and seemingly simplest in PbP games... But damn is it uninteresting. Points are boring by themselves, you're quickly left in the mud with a single bad day (even with a short, low count players, game), and I don't feel like competition between players bring anything to the table.

If I was to redo the same game with exact same plot, I would probably go instead for a, not fundamentally different but feeling different, system of daily objectives granting (small) short term benefits and/or points that could be redeemed at the end (including training from Wu in that case). Definitely not a "first three win" in all cases.

Lack of a way to handle mechanical rolls outside events

By the end of the game, it was obvious trying to deal with "everything" in events was too much. I'm thinking about things I dubbed shenanigans in the Day 1 and 2 events, as well things like divination, preparing wards, etc.

In retrospect, should have:
1) Move out all these special rules out of events proper and into a thread of their own in the Rules thread, with all their effects and restrictions in the context of the game.
2) Drop links to the relevant bits to each character in their private forums.
3) Allow characters to dedicate one slot a day of their choice for their Downtime shenanigans, with the following rules:
a) Strife at the start of the slot is what it was the end of the daily event, or half their Composure, whichever is less.
b) Void is what it was at the end of the daily event.
c) Opportunities can only be used to cancel strife 1-1 or for the special effects of what they are doing.
d) No repeated action (two divination, two crafting, etc.) on the same day.

Secrecy

It's likely fine to have initial leads be obscure to a degree, but the lack of guidelines on when and how to unveil mysteries hurt the game quite a bit. I'm not exactly sure why I have been so indirect about information, especially as there was nothing that would have caused mechanical issues had it been revealed early (I could have published the whole biography of each character on Day 2 without changing a single line of any event).

Possibly my tendency to treat these games as some sort of book or movie, and thus to endlessly wait for "a dramatically appropriate scene" to reveal critical pieces of information, when the nature of such games means being more compromising with the laws of narration and thus, sometimes, dropping bombs while peeling carrots.

In all cases, definitely an issue here (though some of the theories it birthed are honestly funnier than the truth).

Ghosting and special dice

As if ghosting instructions were not complicated enough when rolls can only be pass or fail, now they must take into account oddities like "I could go for the explosion and hope for a greater total result, or take the two opps, failing but activating a possibly more useful effect".

Fights

Fights are always chaotic and time-consuming, but I fear 5ed fights have the potential to be even more of a mess due to the complexity of the rules and how disorganized the book is. It's almost impossible to not forget something, even in a 1-1 fight between two humans, as you have to take into account all interactions between equipment, techniques, stances...

Hope I'm wrong here, but as of now, combat seems to be more fatigue than fun.


The two sides of the coin

Relevant advantages and disadvantages being listed in extenso in event

On the plus side, far more agreeable for both the player and the GM during the game itself, as the former doesn't have to guess if their advantage should apply, and ask the later to confirm or infirm that impression.

On the flip side, making these lists as a GM is a look into the abyss. There are so many advantages and disadvantages, some super generic, some super specific, for which to decide if they should apply or not, while keeping an eye on global balance.

I sadly can't think of a real solution for this issue. I guess it would be naturally alleviated with simpler events, we could have cheat sheets grouping advantages and disadvantages together by themes to ease out the task of filtering them, and indeed events should allow for more on-the-fly adjustments as characters drop in (pretty sure I updated the Timing option of Day 3 to support the Seppun's tech at the last minute for example). But those are palliatives, not a cure.


Harmless, useless?

Events not associated with a location or timeslot

Didn't seem to bring much to the table from my point of view, so Occam's razor would have for this oddity to be discarded in favor of the classic "one event, one place, one location".

Previewing first day/event

I didn't feel like it impacted anything, if only from the simple fact I didn't get a single question about the event before Day 1 started proper, and thus not sure it's something that should be done again in the future. But I could be very wrong here.

Ah yes, one thing I forgot and managed to remember: 5XP is likely a good amount for starting characters. Encourage to pick one skill at 1 + one technique, allowing for more diversity when 0XP techniques tend to be repeated a lot between schools, as well as a taste of power by picking an early access tech.

And of course, that means one too few XP to increase a ring from 1 to 2, which might be the most interesting thing in term of optimization, but also the most boring in term of customization.

Okay, game's over, the cat's away, time to put everything on fire and discuss how some of the things tested in this game are actually not tied to 5ed and could very apply to different systems, and especially L5R 4ed.

I'm thinking in particular of:

Exhaustive list of relevant advantages/disadvantages to each roll of an event

Making a first version of such lists is far easier to make than in 5ed, just need to Ctrl+F the Trait and Skill used on Last Haiku.

And then, once the first, "dumb" version is done, it's easy to alter the list to solve a lot of balance problems without houseruling the advantages and disadvantages directly.

Benten's Blessing is overused? Cut it here and there. Bishamon's Blessing is never used? Well, it'll grant its +1k0 to that roll even if it's not a Raw Strength one. Ebisu's Blessing does absolutely nothing per raw? Well, for that roll in that event, it'll grant a phantom rank in Craft: Farming and a Free Raise.

This is already a thing 4ed games do actually, but often only halfway. A given game will buff one weak advantage once, and then let run rampant a super strong one without restrictions. While, with explicit exhaustive lists each time, the issues are blatant and finding ways to solve them easier.

Skill fallback with TN increase

Rolling unskilled is super penalizing in 4ed, which in turn makes phantom rank advantages super strong. A solution for that would be to allow far more often a gradient of skills.

For example, instead of asking for TN15 Lore: Tropical Fishes/Intelligence, ask for TN15 Lore: Tropical Fishes/Intelligence OR TN20 Lore: Nature/Intelligence OR TN25 Any other Lore skill/Intelligence. People with Sage would still have an advantage, but this time other scholarly builds would have a chance even if they're out of Void points instead of getting hit in the face by the "No raise on unskilled rolls" barrier.

Lore skills are the most obvious example here, but variations like Jiujutsu->Defense->Athletics, Games: Go->Games: Shoji->Game: Any or Battle, could make sense. +5TN is already a huge enough penalty to justify bringing diversified skills instead of trying to roll everything using a generic one.

Again, not something new, just something not systematized.

Magic during events

Yes, I'm opening that can of worms.

This one is definitely not a balance issue, as shugenja's high power level in 4ed (and previous editions) is a well-known fact.

However, just sealing off their powers in most events, even events when it would make sense to call upon the help of the spirits, irks me from a fluff perspective. Especially, as I do think it's possible to add balanced rules for magic during "daily" 4ed events, thanks to there being not so many utility spells, with some basic rules:

• Max one magical enhancement per event.
• Events explicitly listing which spells are allowed, with eventual restrictions or buffs. Examples: Reversal of Fortunes is allowed but only grants one reroll for the whole event, Wisdom and Clarity allowed and granting a Free Raise to all Investigation rolls in that specific library event, Katana of Fire allowed and working as per the book in this Kenjutsu demonstration event, etc.
• A different scale for scoring depending on if the character is benefiting from a magical enhancement or not, with the easy IC justification than more is expected of someone blessed by the kami than from a mere mortal. For example, in a competition event, using magic would reduce the total score obtained by N points, in a cooperative event it wouldn't affect the score but cut in half the glory gain, in a scholarly event it would mean forfeiting the "+1XP that can only be spent on Lore skills" granted by that specific event, etc.

This is also an opportunity to make more unusual spells useful in specific events, and thus encourage more diversified shugenja builds.

So I kinda dropped off the face of the earth with RL getting insanely busy, but I saw on discord game was coming to an end and wanted to give some feedback from the time (as little as it was) playing the game:

1) The strife/void etc resetting and only being for events was honestly fantastic. That alone had me interested in the game trial run and after seeing it in this game I hope that gets adopted for other 5th edition games, because I don't think I'd personally join them otherwise there are so many ways you can have events effecting you outside of events through story and roleplay which is a much cleaner way of doing it. Strife not effecting fluff rolls and only being an event mechanic, with events tailored to stretch peoples strife management, was brilliant. I don't think I can praise this enough.

2) The time and effort you must have gone through to make sure events covered advantages and disadvantages must have been insane and I loved it, so thank you for that.

3) The advantages and disadvantages not being element locked I felt worked nicely. I really liked this.

4) 5th ed seems to be big on its using all the rings, and I liked how you did it for events.

5) Tidbits are neat I think, I'd like to see them used in games in the future as a way to link towards sideplots that the GM has created.

Overall I think the event and mechanics in this game were very well done, and I wish RL was nicer to me thank you for running this game and this experiment for 5th ed. I've not made it a secret how much I disliked the setup of 5th ed and how I felt it didn't work for pbps, but I think your model of using the system was pretty ideal for a pbp setting, and I'm glad to see other GMs have taken the ideas on board.