Rokugan BRP (Help Converting L5R Schools)

[conajofa]

A new question for any of the people that pass by here:

I'm starting to feel unsatisfied with the Rings, and I want to know if anyone has any idea of how to use the Five Rings in interesting ways that:

1. Allows players to start low on them and increase them slowly towards a "Mortal Maximum"
2. Makes people in that "Mortal Maximum" or higher pretty potent

For now my approach is:

Players start at 0 in all Rings, their Clan gives +1 to one Specific Ring, their Family gives +1 to one of 2 Rings, and they can choose to add a +1 to any Ring.

This means that players can start with:

• Three Rings at 1
• One Ring at 2 and One Ring at 1
• One Ring at 3

Each Ring give a series of bonuses in combat and intrigue:

• Fire: Increase Attack Chance [+5% per Ring] - Increase Psychological Damage (Stress) Done [+1 per Ring]
• Earth: Increase Damage Reduction [2 Less Damage per Ring] - Increase Chance of Keeping Face and not being affected [+5% per Ring]
• Air: Increase Defense Chance [+5% per Ring] - Increase Chance of Success with Trickery/Lies [+5% per Ring]
• Water: Increase Damage [1 Damage per Ring] - Increase Chance of Success with "New Information" [+5% per Ring]
• Void: Increase the ammount of Power Points (Willpower Points) of the character [+2 per Ring]

I feel so unsatisfied with this, like something is waiting to explode in any moment. Technically there is people in the setting that has "all Rings at 5"

For now my hasty solutions is change everything to:

• Fire: Increase Stress Done [+2 per Ring]
• Earth: Increase Physical HP (Maximum Damage) [+2 per Ring]
• Air: Increase Social HP (Maximum Stress) [+2 per Ring]
• Water: Increase Damage Done [+2 per Ring]
• Void: Increase the ammount of Power Points (Willpower Points) of the character [+2 per Ring]

But I'm feeling so frustrated about this right now, open to any proposal, even if it changes it a lot.

For those that aren't that familiar with L5R, the general explanation of how it works on the original system is in the spoiler below

Spoiler

• Rings normally go from 1 to 10. 5 is considered the maximum that Mortals can reach, with 6 to 10 being a thing of supernatural entities.
• Rings function threefold:
  • They are magic resistance. A lot of spells requieres you to do a "Ring Roll"
  • They are personality. Fire is intense emotion, Water is adaptability, Air is trickery and nimbleness, Earth is stoic self-control and Void is enlightened esoterism [void is always the weirdest]
  • They are power fuel: Not only Spell Slots are determined by the Rings. But a lot of Techniques use your Rings for rolls. Like Attacking with Spears with Air, or replace Strenght with Fire, etc, etc.
• Increase in Rings is slow, but is possible and there are a good handful of people that has all Rings at 5
• People can somewhat measure the Rings of others and being able of talk of "spiritual imbalances", normally through magic

 

[Mugen]

There are many ways to implement rings in BRP.

As for myself, I think I'd implement rings as pools of points, which can be used to fuel magical and mystical powers, or to gain bonus to chances of success.

If you look at existing BRP games, there are 2 with similar concepts :

-RuneQuest : Adventures in Glorantha gives every character "rune affinities" in %, among which 6 are Elemental runes. Those can be used to Augment a skill, or o perform Runic magic.

-Nephilim is a game about elemental spirits which possess human beings. Each Nephilim has 5 Elemental abilities scores named Ka-element, which are used to cast spells and boost a characteristic. Each Nephilim is tied to an element, and the value of each Ka-element is determined by his Ka (= POWer). For instance, a Fire Nephilim with Ka 16 will have a Ka-Fire of 16, but a Ka-Water of 4.

You could also use them as replacements for characteristics, like in L5R 5th edition, or Qin:the Warring States.

 

Edited April 26 by Mugen

[svensson]

To the basic question of 'to Ring or not to Ring', I think you should keep Rings. One of the very serious faults with WotC's attempt to convert Rokugan to d20 was the lack of a Ring structure in the mechanics. Musashi's Rings were central to the conceptual underpinnings of Rokugan, along with the concept of purity and defilement. Without them, Rokugan becomes far less 'epic'.

@Mugen makes a great point that the concept of Rings and the RQG concept of Runes is very modifiable for your purposes. I don't own Nephilim, so I can't make an informed comment on it.

In addressing your 'mortal maximum' thoughts... If an RQG player wants to increase their Elemental Rune, they have to take action in play to emphasize it. They must use their Rune to become inspired in a given action which will apply bonuses to that action. This is risky, however. If one fails a Runic inspiration roll, then that Rune decreases until there is time for the character to meditate and regain their Runic equilibrium. This serves to keep players from over-using the mechanic. The effect is that players save inspiration rolls for dramatic and important moments in the game... and this is very much in keeping with L5R's Ring system.

 

[Ian Absentia]

11 hours ago, Mugen said:

If you look at existing BRP games, there are 2 with similar concepts :

-RuneQuest : Adventures in Glorantha gives every character "rune affinities" in %, among which 6 are Elemental runes. Those can be used to Augment a skill, or o perform Runic magic.

-Nephilim is a game about elemental spirits which possess human beings. Each Nephilim has 5 Elemental abilities scores named Ka-element, which are used to cast spells and boost a characteristic. Each Nephilim is tied to an element, and the value of each Ka-element is determined by his Ka (= POWer). For instance, a Fire Nephilim with Ka 16 will have a Ka-Fire of 16, but a Ka-Water of 4.

You could also use them as replacements for characteristics, like in L5R 5th edition, or Qin:the Warring States.

I'll add a third BRP-ish game for consideration: King Arthur Pendragon.  This leads me to a Nephilim thread that I started a couple of years back, which in turn refers to yet another thread.  The ring of interdependent elements resonates through a lot of gaming concepts.

There's some discussion in there that refers back to Wyrm's Footnotes No.14.  The concept of dragonewts mastering emotional dichotomies, which might work well with the Rings of Lot5R, though instead of ranking up from 1 to 10, they trend toward mastery-in-the-middle by controlling the extremes.  Have a look at the attached snippets.

!i!

WF14 Dragonewt Personality Traits.pdf

Edited April 26 by Ian Absentia

[Mugen]

14 hours ago, Ian Absentia said:

I'll add a third BRP-ish game for consideration: King Arthur Pendragon.  This leads me to a Nephilim thread that I started a couple of years back, which in turn refers to yet another thread.  The ring of interdependent elements resonates through a lot of gaming concepts.

There's some discussion in there that refers back to Wyrm's Footnotes No.14.  The concept of dragonewts mastering emotional dichotomies, which might work well with the Rings of Lot5R, though instead of ranking up from 1 to 10, they trend toward mastery-in-the-middle by controlling the extremes.  Have a look at the attached snippets.

!i!

WF14 Dragonewt Personality Traits.pdf 1.04 MB · 1 download

Of course, Pendragon is a great inspiration for L5R !

But I will rather use it to model "Honor" and Bushido virtues rather than rings.

L5R gives one monolithic "Honor" stat to every character. But it's a rather useless stat, as its meaning is supposed to change depending on what you think of Bushido virtues. Scorpions usually have a very low Honor and Lions and Cranes have very high Honor because it was a balancing factor in the Card Game between factions. But he RPG tells us he Scorpions may actually be the most honorable faction because they stick to Loyalty with passion.

Using Pendragon as a model and splitting Honor into 7 personality traits makes much more sense than one single and, IMHO, meaningless Honor value.

Just like in Pendragon, acting accordingly to a virtue will make it rise, and acting against it will make it decrease. High virtues could be exalted, but might also lead you to stress, angst and ultimately seppuku.

[conajofa]

@Mugen I get what you mean!

The real utility is it as a resource for Techniques, like Dojis being better diplomats the higher their honor and Scorpion being able to use Honor as a currency.

I suppose one can translate this with personality traits, my real question would be what would be the opposite, Shourido precepts aren't directly opposed.

[Mugen]

2 hours ago, conajofa said:

@Mugen I get what you mean!

The real utility is it as a resource for Techniques, like Dojis being better diplomats the higher their honor and Scorpion being able to use Honor as a currency.

I suppose one can translate this with personality traits, my real question would be what would be the opposite, Shourido precepts aren't directly opposed.

Hmm... You don't really need opposite traits. Given they're always equal to 100-trait, failing a roll under a Trait is basically the same as succeeding a roll under the opposite one.

The list of virtues is, according to this wiki :

Compassion

Courage

Courtesy

Justice

Loyalty

Honor

Sincerity

I think most exist in Pendragon's personality traits, perhaps under different names.

Edited April 27 by Mugen