Infamy

Infamy
by
Dace

With added input from Rixy

A recent thread in the 4th Edition Forums made me think that having an article on Infamy may be useful. Infamy was one of those area's I took a particular interest in during the initial development phase of PT. I found the 3rd Edition to be somewhat confusing and problematic in it's implementation.

In 4th Edition Infamy is it's own separate rank. It works similar to Glory only you start gaining it for doing “bad” things. Now I define bad very loosely here. It could be better stated that it's gained for more villainous deeds. Being bad alone isn't going to gain you Infamy. For instance being dishonorable isn't going to make you Infamous. Not a lone anyway. However someone who gains a reputation for always being dishonorable is like to gain Infamy.

Thus Infamy is gained in two fashion. First by taking the disadvantage of Infamous. This turns all your starting Glory into Infamy. Secondly at any time that the GM feels that the deeds you have down will make you more well known, but in a negative light.

This is a very thin line. In many cases it will come down to how you did something. For instance winning a major battle will normally gain you Glory. However if you win the battle by being ruthless, slaughter the opposing army down to the man then gaining Infamy is more appropriate.

Things like dishonorable actions, murder and blasphemy can also gain you ranks in Infamy. Or it can cause you to simply lose Glory as people work to forget about what you did as opposed to remembering what you did. Such a choice is up to the GM and really comes down to how he wants the character remembered or forgotten.

Many of the gains on the Glory chart work equally well for gaining Infamy. It just now becomes a matter of the character being remembered in a negative light. And once a character starts gaining Infamy odds favor all future Glory gains will raise his Infamy instead of raising his Glory. After all once you start doing bad things people tend to associate those bad things with you no matter what you do.

It takes a lot of work for a character to have both Glory and Infamy. Such a character has to work very hard to make sure that people are hearing both sides of the story. Or are seeing his good actions as separate from his bad actions.

So in general a character is normally gaining one or the other.

What follows are some conditions that may make one Infamous.

Duels – If it's one thing Rokugani like it's dueling. Well maybe two or three things. While dueling is a glorious thing there are situations in which a samurai can gain a bad reputation from it. Such as

Underground dueling – Not all duels are legal. Some samurai build a reputation for dueling when they aren't sanctioned to do so by their lords. These type of duels can also include duels to the death.

Cruel Duelist – such a person is gaining a reputation for being cruel during a duel. This could be for injuring people in a duel to first blood to being brutal during duels to the death.
Dishonor – I wouldn't award Infamy for dishonor. That's already reflected in having a low honor score. However particular acts of dishonorable behavior could be enough to gain infamy.

War – War is the perfect place for a samurai to gain Infamy.

Merciless – Compassion is a virtue. Not acting with it though can mark one as a merciless opponent.

Court – Courtier's are a dangerous lot. People like Kaukatsu don't always gain a positive reputation in the courts.

Doing Something Different with Infamy

An adventurous GM may consider doing a few things different with Infamy. For example you could take Hero of the People and create a version of it for individuals who are more feared by the common folk than they are by samurai. One could call it Villain of the People.

Also much like how Glory can be situational based on region and local one could also apply it to Infamy. A character may be more well known in Phoenix lands for his acts of villainy than he is in Unicorn lands. It is also possible to award a character with temporary ranks of Infamy depending on where he is at.

Take the case of one …. Hida Sozen. Born a Dragon, joined the Crab. Reached enlightenment by punching rocks. Kills oni with his bare hands. In Crab lands (and most parts of the empire) he is a samurai to be respected. He is a brave and mighty warrior. One of the best the Crab have to offer.

But in Asahina lands he is likely known as a vile and bastardly destroyer of art. A GM would be well with in his rights to award a character like Sozen (who would normally have Glory) with ranks of Infamy for the duration of his stay in Crane lands. This would represent the negative reception such a character as Sozen would receive while visiting with Crane. This Infamy could even apply outside of Crane lands specifically to Crane characters.

This would of course create a bit more bookkeeping for the GM, but is something worth considering.

As a finally wrap up here are some characters one might consider as examples of those who would possess Infamy.

Bayushi Shoju – One of the most famous Scorpion characters to grace this game. Shoju did the impossible. He killed an Emperor and seized the throne. His goal was noble (to stop Fu Leng from being reborn) but such actions will always make a person go down in history as the lowest of the low.

Bayushi Kaukatsu – A terror in the courts. He ruled them with an iron fist and made the courts yet another instrument in the Scorpions aresonal. A man with few contemporaries (and a man that out lived them) a single word from him could end your career if not your life.

Moto Chagatai – The Unicorn Khan. An ambitious man who sought to bring prestige and respect to his clan. Defeating the Lion during the War of the Rich Frog, Chagatai sacked the imperial city, killed Lion Champion's as if they were small children and even killed a man thought to be his equal (Kaneka). His actions brought down the ruin of the Imperial court and the end of the Toturi dynasty.

Hida Sozen – While I am of the personal opinion that Sozen as a character isn't infamous Rixy in a discussion did bring up some solid points about him. A man to be feared. One of the best examples of what it means to be a Crab, despite being born a Dragon. Enlightened. Battle hardened. And a name you don't want to repeat if you want to stay in the Crane's good graces. Upon the orders of his clan champion Hida Koun and the Jade Champion Kuni Daigo, Sozen goes into Asahina lands to retrieve the much needed jade for an assault into the unforgiving wasteland. Sozen being a practical man obtains this jade the only way he knows how, over the tears of sorrow of the Crane as he destroys their artwork.

Daigotsu – Daigotsu's list of crimes against the empire included, but not limited to, killing Toturi; killing Tsudao; unleashing Fu Leng upon the heavens; sacking the first Imperial City; creating the Onisu; infiltrating the empire; and a night of assassinations that almost left the empire leaderless. The Dark Lord of the Shadowlands, he is a man not to be trifled with.

Emerald Empire Previews

And as promised Todd has put up some previews for Emerald Empire. For those who may be at work and can't take a look at the pdf's let me break it down for you.

The first preview posted is the Table of Contents. You'll be able to see that the book pretty much covers 300 pages of information on Rokugan. The index in the original Emerald Empire starts on page 269 while in the new Emerald Empire starts on 296. That's 27 pages of brand new material :).

This new material includes new chapters. Chapter Five is a chapter covering the Arts. Chapter Eleven covers the world beyond Rokugan. And there are now two new appendixes added.

The second Appendix is the other pdf preview. This Appendix is a Way of the Daiymo update. Lovingly crafted by Brian Yoon, if you were a fan of the original Way of the Daimyo then you won't want to miss out on this.

Considering the new chapters, new schools (Soshi Magistrate) and even updates for some oldies but goodies (Shinjo Bushi, Doji Magistrate) I would venture to say that Emerald Empire is much more than an update of an instant classic.

Previews for Emerald Empire

Todd has announced on the AEG forums that Emerald Empire has been sent off to the press and that he is currently working on pdf quality previews.

So close yet so far :)

Weekend in Rokugan

At about this time of the year the good folks of Hero's of Rokugan run a weekend long event called Weekend in Rokugan. It's a chance to get together and do some face to face role playing in the Hero's of Rokugan setting.

This is the 3rd campgain for the Hero's of Rokugan game titled Spirit of Bushido. It takes place during the Spirit Wars and will be an alternate reality for that setting.

If you're intrested in going to WiR


January 14, to January 16th at the Plaza Hotel in Overland Park
7000 W. 108th St., Overland Park, KS, 66211, USA
(913)383-2550

Entry fee is $17 dollars at the door, $15 in advance, with the profit going to Harvesters. Donations to the food bank, either grocery or dry goods (toothpaste, papertowels, anything of the sort) will recieve one exp for your pc, similar to KC Game fair. January is a difficult month for food banks, as they have used up most of their stock in December helping folks have a good Christmas


For more info on HoR try these links

http://heroes-of-rokugan.com/index.php

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Heroes-of-Rokugan/154332847945381?v=info

Making Ninjitsu Deadly

Making Ninjitsu Deadly
By
Muchitsujo

Everyone knows that ninja and ninjutsu can be used to kill people with poisons, in 4th edition that is doubly so with the current ninja school getting bonuses to attack unaware targets, and people who are suffering a conditional effect. Because poisons now mostly deliver conditional effects alongside trait loss the Shosuro assassin is going to do well dropping one unaware target as their abilities stay strong.

However the weapons they wield themselves, blowguns, tsubute and shuriken, have long been regarded as weaker gimped alternatives to bows and knives. I'm going to show you how you can get bang for your buck from your tsubute.

The unaware targets rule of 3rd edition is now gone, seemingly replaced with only an ambush mechanic. This appears to leave ninja in the lurch as they are suddenly up against the full armour TN of all but the most unaware target.
But a cunning enough ninja ought to get an opponent in a situation where they are either 'helpless' aka stunned, or 'blinded' aka have no idea they are about to get ganked.
This is based on the new principles of 4th Edition. In 3rd edition it seemingly had to be printed to exist, in 4th edition your GM should be able to make the difference and interepret the rules to make sense. Here's an example
you are walking through the woods, hunting bandits or a bear, the bandits jump you. Standing ready for combat you damn well deserve your full armour TN.
You are sitting at a sake house, a ninja has scaled the rooftops and come down through to beams to above your private room, you are sitting their quietly talking.
Do you seriously want to tell me the latter example deserves his full armour TN? Frankly thats just redonculous.
The rules actually say (pg 88) "The GM might also rule that a surprised character is easier to hit, depending on whether that seems appropriate to the circumstances"
So our Ninja ought to be able to craft situations where their GM allows then a lowered armour TN.

Now if your Ninja is going to attack armoured and alert targets you deserve the pumelling you get. Ninja do their killing best when their targets are sleeping, drunk or 'otherwise engaged'..

But how you scream! A tsubute does 1k1 damage that doesn't explode!!
Well thats easy, your a ninja, you have to specialise like anyone else to be good at killing.
First the mastery abilities bring the weapons up to par with other ranged options, but they still dont make up for not being able to add your strength to damage. 2k2 isn't much of a damage roll for someone who has gotten a skill rank of 7.
The other must-have to make ninjitsu effective is the advantage great potential. That turns the puny 3-4 raises you can make on damage into 7+
Now what to do with those raises... you might at first say, DAMAGE! and to that I say no.
Use your raises for two things, in priority order, Feinting, and extra attack.
This is where that high skill rank comes in, it'll let you pull the crazy number of raises required to do that. And any decent ninja will have an agility of 4+, which is the trait of choice for throwing things (reference the athletics options here)
try to arrange a comfy hiding space where you can enter centre stance for a round, adding the centre stance benefit to a damage roll will really make a difference.
The last thing of course is that all important void point, spend that on the attack that has the raises for extra attack.

How you ask, can you feint if they can't see you?
Depends how you set it up, maneuver your target with a thrown rock in the opposite direction or some sort of diversionary tactic so they move into a more exposed position...sure sounds like a feint to me.

but to be sure it may not be every GM's cup of tea.

This will leave your 3 shuriken attacks as follows (based on a rank 3)
lets assume a measly agility of 4 on our rank 3 Shosuro
for attack that's 10k6 +void...and if you are super cunning and your hiding place doesnt require exertion you'll have been in centre stance previous round.
Damage
one at 2k2, plus on average 10 for feint.
two at a 5k2 plus on average the full 15 for feint.

that's again on average 66 damage. If the GM allows the target a void to reduce damage that will still drop an earth 3 target straight to out.. and if you've been dropped to out, and there is a ninja in the shadows who wants you dead, your survival odds are not great.

That cost our shinobi
Great potential Ninjitsu, 5 points
Ninjitsu 7, 30 points
Agility 4, 16 points (but a shinobi with a lower agility is as good as dead)
thats 51 XP, 18 of which must be spent in play.

Killing your target? Priceless.

Now our example has shown you HOW you can be effective...but why bother?

Well if you have ever tried to find a decent place to hide in the dark, and stand upright to shoot a bow with both hands, you'll know that a one handed, easily disposible weapon is a must have. Hankyu do have a better range and damage output, but try firing one from a roofbeam...welcome to TN penalties from your friendly GM.

Also we didn't include blowdarts in our example..because they aren't designed to kill people, they are designed to be innocuous. What it doesn't tell you in the blowdarts section is that Ninja would attach cotton to the feathers of the darts and quickly retrieve their dart, leaving no evidence of the dart *Ahem* except the poison coursing through the targets veins.

As for knives, well unless you are a Cashed up Daidoji Harrier with Koku to burn, do you really want to spend 1 koku of your 5 starting Koku on each crime scene? Or do you intend to try and retrieve every weapon?
Knives are expensive, and have a poorer range that ninjitsu weapons.
Knives are an option, to be sure, but if you have to resort to theft, which may compromise your real missions, its an option a proffessional assassin wouldn't resort to.

A Sneak Peak into Emerald Empire v 2.0

As I mentioned while responding to a comment, I'm readjusting to being back in school. So the blog entries aren't coming as fast as I'd like. Rest assured though I intend to keep things running.

Todays topic of discussion is Emerald Empire. While at Gen Con I did an interview for L5Rchives and discussed some of the schools to look forward to in this highly anticipated book. So today I'm going to go over in brief what I discussed at Gen Con.

Hida Pragmatist - Nothing more to say on it other than, bare fisted bar room brawling Crab action.

Doji Magistrate - A classic is back. In addition to it being back the school was reworked somewhat to mechanically represent the Crane martial art of Mizu Do. I personally liked it. And this goes a long way to help illustrate what was talked about earlier with 4th Edition and how we'll look at new ways to do old things.

Lion's Shadows - This is the 4th Edition update of the Ikoma Spymaster school. The Lion are not one of my favorite clans, but I did enjoy working with this school. I think the name change is also appreciate.

Soshi Magistrate - This is definitely a new one and one that made me the most happiest. The Scorpion have finally gotten their magistrate school. This guy is definitely the bad cop to the Doji Magistrates good cop.

Now I know that wasn't much to go on, but I hope it's enough to whet your whistle. Emerald Empire should have enough new, mixed in with the old and some updates for highly anticipated schools like the Shinjo Bushi.

Creating Spirit Characters: The Quick and Easy

Creating Spirit Characters
The Quick and Easy
by Dace

So before we begin I would like to state that when I sit down to come up with rules I tend to err on the side of what makes for a fun story. So a lot of my suggestions are in fact based on the idea of creating what I feel is a good story.

The Spirit rules found in Enemies of the Empire create a brief and quick way of making a Spirit character for the purpose of NPC building. This doesn't work so well for PC's.

Now allowing a Spirit character into the game does present some intresting problems. Some GM's may find them out right disruptive. Spirits have an alien mind set from the average Rokugani, being compled to respond more based on the nature of the realm they come from and their spirit nature than that of a samurai. Concepts like honor and bushido do not always come to them.

Other things that a GM must consider is that such characters have no lords. And if things get too sticky for them could merely disappear into the spirit realm they came from. Certain combitnations of spirit powers and schools must also be watched since the powers themselves were never tested against the schools.

With all that in mind let us begin.

The basic spirit character is built by using the base animal and then adding the to it the spirit quality and basic spirit powers based on the spirit itself. Most of these base animal traits can be found either in Enemies of the Empire or the Core Rule book.

Start off using the base stats given as the basic spirit of that character. Example, I'm building a Ryu spirit to interact with some PC's in my game. I anticpate heavy use of the character and therefore will build it as a basic character. We will call him Hiei.

Hiei basic starting stats will be the same as all Ryu (found on page 254 of EotE).

Hiei

Air 4
Awareness 6
Earth 3
Fire 4
Intelligence 5
Water 3
Perception 4

It's intitatve will of course be recalculated based on the school, but I would keep it's Reduction. No matter the form after all it will still have those qualities. Though I would only allow it it's claw damage when Hiei is fighting in dragon form. It's claw damage and armor TN would only apply when in dragon form.

Now the Ryu have a couple of extra abilities. Shapeshifter, Swift, Spirit and Soul of a Dragon. The Shapeshifting ability will be put to good use when it comes time to chose which powers it has. As a GM I would only apply the Soul of a Dragon ability when Hiei is serving in the capacity of the Celestial Heavens. This is one of the reasons why the book notes that such characters can be disruptive

The next step is now to chose which spirit ablities the character will have. Since Hiei intends to interact as a mortal human Humanity is a must. Mimic also makes a good choice for a guy who intends to help guide other characters. Showing up in the guise of someone the characters might trust or just observing them with a new face from time to time. And finally a Panthers Move.

Three minor ablities require three minor penalties. So we'll go with Can't drink alcohol, Must always dress in colors of your natural form and You can't answer questions in a straight forward manner.

Now comes the tricky part, a school. Now for the more powerful creatures I believe in making them True Ronin in point spending. Even if we are choosing a great clan school, say Hiei wants to pretend to be an Asako monk, I do not believe that spirit characters who start out with an initially strong set of abilities should have more points during character generation.

So in general if it has several abilities on it's own, or will pick up many abilities (like the Kitsune) I recommend using the True Ronin CP. If it has only a handful of abilities, around 2, then I say go with the clan ronin. If it only has one ablity (epically one that will be taken up with the Humanity trait) then I would say go the full 45 CP that any starting character gets. Tsuru, Saru and Tanuki spirits spring to mind as spirits deserving of the standard character package.

Now as for schools. Such characters don't get a Family bonus, but they would get the School bonus. Most will have decent traits to start with anyway from their animal. I recommend keeping the same set of basic rings and traits no matter the form. Far less confusing that way.

School selection should be done based on background. A spirit who just walked out of the woods three weeks ago is best suited for Monk and Ronin schools. A spirit who has studied a clan however may be able to pick up or trick someone into teaching them techniques. I would require such characters however to have at least three ranks in Lore (Clan). A spirit that is trying to be an Asako should have some working knowledge of how the Phoenix and Asako work.

And there you have it. The quick and easy of making Spirit PC's.