Riddles Wisely Expounded

[Soshi Eiji]

I also got a little bit of whiplash when Eiji went to crying out for punishment for the Lion and then went "Psych! Not that kind of punishment!" The punishment debate in general was not something I was anticipating at all. I was with Sae: bad guys get killed in Rokugan. And I guess I assumed everyone else was, too!

Thee points:

1) When Hida-sama announced (perfectly in-character) 'Kill teams! Watcha gonna do? Now the bowman's wager!" it gave the very distinct impression that this was not being taken seriously by the higher ups. Of course the immediate perpetrators would be found that was never in doubt, but given as this was the second major security breach, and no one was stepping forward to explain how this happened, or to apologize for the why, it came off bad.

2) Y'all made a point of "Oooh, the Seppun are watching EVERYONE who interacts with the heirs." And yet a kill team still gets to take a shot? It was never Eiji going after the Lion for punishment, he was after the Seppun, specifically Tomaru and Lady Seppun. Not to kill them, but to get some kind of apology or some concession out of them.

3) Executing a samurai like a criminal rather than letting them commit seppeku is a really big deal. That dishonors their whole family. Eiji would never push such shame onto the Lion. But if you're going to start standing with Sae, you need to update your poll to including your fishing tournament game

[Cearnach]

Eiji, you didn't do anything wrong. I was just surprised, is all.

[Agasha Yuna]

2) Y'all made a point of "Oooh, the Seppun are watching EVERYONE who interacts with the heirs." And yet a kill team still gets to take a shot? It was never Eiji going after the Lion for punishment, he was after the Seppun, specifically Tomaru and Lady Seppun. Not to kill them, but to get some kind of apology or some concession out of them.

If it is gratifying to know, it was clear to Yuna you were going after Seppun Tomaru and Lady Seppun. That's why she jumped in and spoke against.

[Soshi Eiji]

Eiji, you didn't do anything wrong. I was just surprised, is all.

Oh I didn't think I did either I just wanted to explain in case you still were confused.

[Soshi Eiji]

Director's Cut Question: Think back on the game as a whole. If you could go back, and add just one more scene with my character and one of your NPCs in it, what would it be? Who is there? What are they doing/talking about?

[Cearnach]

Director's Cut Question: Think back on the game as a whole. If you could go back, and add just one more scene with my character and one of your NPCs in it, what would it be? Who is there? What are they doing/talking about?

I think Eiji would have benefited from a nice sit-down with Shosuro Asakaze, talking indirectly about the boss. Not a terribly likely situation, but it would have been interesting. That, or Keihime. I don't think he'd have been any less horrified at her "Bushido is polite fiction" philosophy than anyone else, but I would have been curious to see what you did with it afterwards.

[Soshi Eiji]

I think Eiji would have benefited from a nice sit-down with Shosuro Asakaze, talking indirectly about the boss. Not a terribly likely situation, but it would have been interesting. That, or Keihime. I don't think he'd have been any less horrified at her "Bushido is polite fiction" philosophy than anyone else, but I would have been curious to see what you did with it afterwards.

Former definitely would have been interesting. I could see Asakaze taking eiji aside for a "Look, kid you're new around here, so lemme fill you in on how things are actually working here."

Keihime would have made for a really challenging discussion.

Keihime: Bushido is a polite fiction.
Eiji: But....you're higher up in the social standing, but that is clearly wrong....must find way to disagree while sounding like I'm agreeing!

[Shiba Ryusei]

Actually, that's a fun one!

Ryusei logged a fair amount of time with Higashime (to the point where she actually mentioned him by name to somebody else!) but did you have any NPCs you think should have bounced off of him but never did?

[Cearnach]

You were so busy! I'm tempted to say Togashi Mizohachi, but I'm not sure if that would have worked well. I think Ryusei might have gotten an interesting perspective from Sanae or Minehime. Sanae never really got out of the treaty-stamping area, but her very balanced way of looking at life (art vs. warfare; pragmatism vs. bushido) complemented that changes that were happening in Ryusei.

[Doji Hikaru]

I don't know if you can say, but what was brewing in the Kamoshita / Shimomura feud. I felt like there was something more there, but I couldn't crack how to get into it.

[Cearnach]

That was an illustration of how the house system generates its own problems which will end up feeding the Winds crisis. The Shimomura and Kamoshita (and the Kamoshita and all their neighbors) have feuded quite a bit over the years. The Kamoshita recognized that the succession crisis would inevitably lead to the breakdown of the normal social safeguards that they relied on to mitigate retribution for their raids, so they sent Honoka to play nice and get advantages and Kinuyo to send a message that they can make any attack against them very, very expensive.

Kinuyo gets Eiji to puff Shigehiko up and make him feel good, then pulls the rug out from under him by telling him that he's been played, then uses his agitation to force a challenge. She would have liked to have killed him in self-defense in the full flush of his anger, but you guys put a stop to that, so she had to make do with a much more blunt (and less justified) statement about how the Kamoshita mean to protect themselves.

There wasn't much more to it than that.

[Doji Shinnosuke]

I remembered something I meant to ask!

Could we see the blurbs for all the Sumai competitors? The ones I discovered were really entertaining, and I didn't collect all of them.

[Cearnach]

Sure!

Miyagino: Intimidation 15, Temptation 20. Miyagino is a simple man of simple pleasures. He values his personal comfort, his reputation, sake, and cash. There is a story that, early in his career, he feigned illness rather than face the famous Rikuhudo in the ring.

Onogawa: Temptation 15, Spears 20. Onogawa came up in the Daidoji army before he turned to the life of sumai. He still trains with his yari each day. It’s part of his schtick that he is always ready to return to the field if the Crane find themselves at war. Of course, he also enjoys the finer things in life, and there are rumors that his manager has had to work overtime covering up this or that scandal related to overindulgence.

Raiden: Acting 15, Etiquette 20. A former Ozeki now toward the end of his career, Raiden is a very cultured man, a frequent patron of the theater, and a fixture in the Governor’s Court at Ryoko Owari Toshi. He has a permanently reserved seat at the Imperial Theater in Otosan Uchi (it has his house’s mon in the lacquer). He is famous for his rigid adherence to the sacred etiquette and traditions of the ring.

Kashiwado: Courtier 15, Staves 20. Kashiwado considers his role as a rising star of the sumai ring to double as an ambassador of the Crab clan. He knows the rhythm of court, and enjoys a turn of phrase and a careful ploy as much as any silk-clad fop. None of which is to imply that he left his training behind him. This is a dangerous man who has seen fell horrors—and then has beaten them to death with his trusty staff.

Onomatsu: Sailing 15, Sincerity 20. Onomatsu was until very recently a guard on his family’s homestead in the Twilight Mountains. He is guileless, an innocent fallen from the turnip truck, but his travels in the sumai circuit have introduced him to his true love: the sea. Ever since he first caught a whiff, he has been unable to get the smell of the ocean out of his nostrils. He could spend hours talking about it.

Tanikaze: Ninjutsu 15, Temptation 20. A long fascination with stories about the Shosuro family’s exploits in the service of the Empire has made Tanikaze susceptible to displays of ninjutsu (He’d never tell anyone! He swears!) and the wiles of romantic seducers. He has a bias for Shosuro family members–but not those with the Bland disadvantage. Those can’t be real Shosuro, like in his stories! The TNs for such characters are 5 lower.

Tamagaki: Spellcraft 15, Investigation 20. The sumai Tamagaki has bought strongly into the intellectual wave that is sweeping the Lion clan. Fashioning herself a natural scholar, she has taken to collating and synthesizing data on the mikokami when her training schedule permits, in spite of the fact that she cannot personally communicate with them. She likes to point out that this can be an advantage, as she will be better able to maintain objectivity than someone with a personal relationship to these “fascinating creatures…I mean spirits.” She appreciates talking about her research topic, but is happy to review data on other subjects with fellow inquiring minds.

Tsurugizan: Courtier 15, Etiquette 20. Ichiro Masaya joined the wrestling life in large part to see the world and meet new people. Once he escaped the hardscrabble life on the northern border, he discovered a universe of sophistication which appeals like nothing else before. He has a small talent in conversation, but what’s important is that he is a sponge, learning techniques constantly.

Hidenoyama: Sailing 15, Knives 20. The very first thing Hidenoyama did after winning his first purse on the circuit was buy a yacht. It sits most of the year in the harbor of Otosan Uchi, but boy does he love it. His official portrait–used in every notice announcing his bouts–features him standing on the boat, looking manfully out to unknown vistas. Apparently he was well known for his knife work in the Matsu dojo, but he has been a wrestler for some time, now. Surely all of that is behind him.

Inazuma: Battle 15, Commerce 20. In an idiosyncratic family, Inazuma stands out as particularly interesting. He is a voice for interventionism in the Dragon clan, believing firmly that the suffering in the world evaporates in the face of combat, when one’s ignorance is immaterial and there is only survival or death. Perhaps paradoxically, he is also a devotee of Daikoku, and has a keen eye for monetary policy.

[Yasuki Ryoichi]

I enjoyed Kaiu Masahiko the most. He was an operator, friendly, but overly paranoid, and he cost the Crab a little less than he helped them, which is sort of what an NPC boss is all about. The only NPC I felt like I just didn't really have was Tatsuya.

I liked Kaiu Masahiko a lot! He felt like the voice of experience at Imperial Court who understood the complicated chess game being played by the various factions, and I thought he did a great job of guiding Ryoichi and the other Crab.

I would've liked to have seen more from Tatsuya, but I think only a couple players really sought him out, so maybe he didn't have much opportunity to develop a voice. For awhile I was considering trying to start threads introducing Tatsuya to the various important Clan dignitaries, but I figured forcing you to roleplay NPCs talking to other NPCs would be unreasonable.

[Cearnach]

I think I would have been a little more comfortable with that than GB (a consequence of being an only-child? A manifestation of my madness? Who is to say?), but there is an awkwardness at the start of the scene because you essentially need to know what is going to go down in order to manage the voices and have things be coherent. It's adding the third player that you don't know or who might change their mind about what is going to happen that makes those challenging for me. I'd like to try it out in the future, because I figure it's a skill like anything else, but you can feel the stretch.

[Cearnach]

It just occurred to me that I did this with Kaguya and Minehime's scene, but you can see that their status kind of marginalizes Ryu, which wasn't totally awesome. Tatsuya would be more on Ryoichi's level, so would have been a different exercise.

[Isawa Shingo]

That was an illustration of how the house system generates its own problems which will end up feeding the Winds crisis. The Shimomura and Kamoshita (and the Kamoshita and all their neighbors) have feuded quite a bit over the years. The Kamoshita recognized that the succession crisis would inevitably lead to the breakdown of the normal social safeguards that they relied on to mitigate retribution for their raids, so they sent Honoka to play nice and get advantages and Kinuyo to send a message that they can make any attack against them very, very expensive.

Kinuyo gets Eiji to puff Shigehiko up and make him feel good, then pulls the rug out from under him by telling him that he's been played, then uses his agitation to force a challenge. She would have liked to have killed him in self-defense in the full flush of his anger, but you guys put a stop to that, so she had to make do with a much more blunt (and less justified) statement about how the Kamoshita mean to protect themselves.

There wasn't much more to it than that.

I loved the concept of houses feuding or otherwise having their schemes pop up and I hope there'll be even more of that in the future. I definitely didn't have time to get into house politics like I wanted to, but there are plenty of hooks waiting for use in future games. And boy do I/Shingo want to remake the landscape of Phoenix houses...

[Yogo Kiuchi]

I just want to say thanks for running this game.

[Asahina Hoshiko]

As I said elsewhere, finally getting through all the tabs I popped open to say thanks for the game. The huge amount of background work is apparent. NPCs really all had distinct voices, which is impressive with such a huge cast of them. I always wish I could write faster to better use my small workday posting window. Sorry that created a lot of drag interacting with NPCs.

Shintaro was a delightful little nerd, and I appreciated the Ningi developments, and spiritual upheaval providing some focus.

The Houses feel like a really large an complex knot to keep track of. Any plans to help make their effects and threads of influence more clear for players?

[Cearnach]

The core of the plan is that the Clan Daimyo will get more and more inert, and the houses will be the dynamic forces of the campaign. You can see that already starting to happen when you look at the character goals--most folks have either personal or local ambitions. The games will also start to get more local as time goes on. We do have things that touch on individual Daimyo (Hunt for the Oracle being one of them), but the reasons for players to interact with that adventure may have much more to do with their house than with their Family Daimyo. In the case of Hunt for the Oracle, several of the houses have problems that could really benefit from a True Answer. While we have not gotten into a lot of the Event writing, yet, there's a mechanic in the bones of the game that rewards a much wider set of house stats than Influence.

Additionally, we're developing games that zoom in on specific houses and their immediate concerns (right now, those are the Kan and the Isa, but there are *plenty* of other candidates, including the Tanose, the Terada, the Kamoshita, and the Onodera). Naturally, their stories will then take center stage, and the House mechanics will necessarily follow suit, as their resources become the building blocks of the players' success.

Finally, things will change and Houses become more important as we start to divide the factions in games not by the Clans, but by the Winds. This may, in fact, be the last Windrise game where Clan membership is the determinant factor in faction design. Obviously, that is not entirely set in stone, and Clan Daimyo will continue to exercise some influence on characters (they still want things, they still have a lot of resources), but they will start to recede a bit as that goes on. Anyway, that's the vision for the next stretch of the campaign.