OOC Discussion

[jemmus]

Good to work for a good company! Our guys are whittling us down bit by bit. But I've seen their bottom line for 2020 compared to 2019. A little bad, but not that bad.

Here the macabre ladies of Onibaba show how to efficiently transport looted armor and weapons.

In Nippon, there is always a decided upon and surely most efficient way to do anything. From peeling oranges hauling heavy things to getting foundation stones where they are to where they're needed.

The image is from is from the b&w film Onibaba, which I'm kind of fearfully watching again after two decades. It's seems better now than the first time I saw it long ago... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b145MBaUsWU

[jemmus]

OMG. Encounters with bandits in both games-- OK. Encounters with women NPCs in bandit lairs in both games-- Alright then. I'm glad I'm just running one PC and not two in these parallel storylines!

[jemmus]

Wanted to get you all's thoughts on a couple of things.

a) Now that we all know the game better, and there's only the four of us, what to you think about revisiting the optional armor damage rule? I initially thought it would be two much recordkeeping for PBP. But I'm not sure now. The downside is more recordkeeping. The upside could be that it adds some content and challenges for players. "We were planning on traveling on to the village. But do we want to first get to a town to repair armor?" "I have to choose between spending downtime improving a bugei and working on Armorer skill."

b) What to we think about the optional critical damage limb severing rule?
Optional Ru1e:Critical damage done is the percent chance of the
limb being severed, if an edged weapon is used, or broken, if a blunt
weapon is used.

[ffilz]

I'm comfortable with both these options. Bushido is definitely a "hard mode" game, let's play it in all it's hard glory.

[jmacatty]

I don't care for extra bookkeeping, but I'll do whichever.

[jemmus]

The loss of limbs rule wouldn't take any extra recordkeeping. It's just either "limb disabled" or "roll percentage dice to see if limb severed." One more time, I'll invoke the quote of the guy who sold me the rulebooks. "Bushido. Bloody."

For optional armor damage rules, two votes for then, one against. Really, I don't think it would be fair to impose extra recordkeeping on players after we're already in ongoing games. I'll offer for to GM track armor damage for PCs, damage to NPCs' armor, and prompt players to to update their char sheets with current armor damage/AC loss. (Deciding vote is with Marullus-- no pressure there ). Actually I don't know if you guys have been updating your posted Budo, Shugendo, and On scores so far. I have a record, I'll post where you ought to be in this game (Honor or Death). Ito has some 1 Budo point from the fight with the O-Bakemono.

[jmacatty]

I haven't bveen tracking budo as it is difficult to track, not knowing exactly who I've killed, who I've damaged and someone else killed, and how much is received for not killed but surrendered. On, of course can only be awarded by the GM.

[Marullus]

a) Now that we all know the game better, and there's only the four of us, what to you think about revisiting the optional armor damage rule? I initially thought it would be two much recordkeeping for PBP. But I'm not sure now. The downside is more recordkeeping. The upside could be that it adds some content and challenges for players. "We were planning on traveling on to the village. But do we want to first get to a town to repair armor?" "I have to choose between spending downtime improving a bugei and working on Armorer skill."

My initial analysis from the previous posts:

My personal opinions:

• The optional armor damage rules seem to be the most benefit to the group who chose the Armorer skill. If someone chose that skill, it is worthless unless we also use this rule, and that's disenfranchising the the player who invested in it needlessly.
• We don't have anyone with the Armorer skill in my game. Toshizo is a Fisherman and Ha is a Bower. However, in the other game Kentaro is a Tracker but Omi and Ito are both Armorers.
• If we're scavenging within-type, then the only time our Samurai can improve their armor is when fighting another actual Samurai, and one who has better armor than them at that. Reducing AC of damaged armor by 1d10 is pretty brutal to do on top of that. I am okay with a decision to allow straight-swap for a better armor, and also okay if we want to allow swap for a damaged armor that an Armorer can repair.
• With encumbrance rules, I think weapons are good and armor is worthless for the purpose of reclaiming for bounty. There's a reason they only want us to turn in heads. I see us trading up for better gear for ourselves, but what we take back for rewards is different.

My new thoughts:

Regarding: "We were planning on traveling on to the village. But do we want to first get to a town to repair armor?"
Play-by-post is already slow. Adding diversions like this will take a RL month each time for little appreciable story benefit.

I only think armor damage is worth it if armor-repairing is part of a PC's desired story. As noted above, that is only a factor for Omi and Ito, both now played by Jmacatty. I think the final call is up to him and if it is a no, he should be able to swap those skills for a different Bushi pick on each.

In my game we don't have armorers, so they'll have an option to straight trade-up for better armor if they beat someone wearing it. I'll assume upkeep is handled off screen.

b) What to we think about the optional critical damage limb severing rule?
Optional Ru1e:Critical damage done is the percent chance of the
limb being severed, if an edged weapon is used, or broken, if a blunt
weapon is used.

Sure! That all sounds fun.

Actually I don't know if you guys have been updating your posted Budo, Shugendo, and On scores so far. I have a record, I'll post where you ought to be in this game (Honor or Death). Ito has some 1 Budo point from the fight with the O-Bakemono.

Thanks for the reminder... I haven't calculated the Budo/On from the fight yet but it is my intent to put the awards in The Story Thus Far so it is easy for you (and me) to find.

I have a sheet on Kentaro's workbook for tracking the awards you have granted so far.

[jemmus]

I pieced this together about what happens when PCs level up.
Gain 5 On
Add +2 (for Level 2) to BCS for bonus skills
A one hit die
Spellcasters add 10 to Power

Look about right?

Next I will attempt to decrypt and summarize the rules for study, exercise, and increasing attribute.

[Marullus]

Without deep review, seems right.

With the spreadsheets, the equation add level to bonus skills, so that's incorporated.

I need to study how we advance actual skills - it looks like downtime... strange to me that it's not coupled with levels or XP.

[jemmus]

Good to know that the spreadsheet is tuned to add the level to the bonus skill BCS.

For advancing skills, I think that's exactly right, it's completely tied to downtime study. Which seems to mean that during non-downtime, you need to earn enough to support yourself during some weeks of downtime. Typically, that requires paying for inn costs. And there are the Learning Rate bonuses for studying with a teacher, which also has costs. It seems that the idea is the PCs need to earn a lot of loot, then convert the wealth into weeks of downtime study to improve their skill scores (i.e. BCSes).

Considering the slow pace of PBP, I'm considering being a little more generous with loot and payments to PCs' what the books say. Otherwise it could take quite a long RL time for PCs to be able to improve their skills scores. Especially during lower levels, while fighting weaker and poorer opponents. Don't want a vicious circle of weak PC, therefore weak and poor foes, therefore poor PCs unable to increase attributes, and therefore they can't defeat more challenging and richer foes. I slow, challenging fight to improve skills could be fun if we all had four hours a week to play live. But of course we don't.

[Marullus]

Ahhh. That makes sense! Like much in Bushido, it is very clever and ahead of its time from a design perspective.

With PbP, I found a good balance giving 3x XP for a long running OSR game. In this case, if the advancement comes from downtime expenditures. Perhaps we consider a 2/3 reduction in Inn costs instead of ballooning cash.

[jemmus]

OK, let's go with 3x XP to avoid long, long slogs for leveling. I don't want to be Monty Haul*, but it would seem that the loot value multiplier would need to be the roughly the same. So that the ratio for time spent adventuring and and the costs for downtime training would stay the same. If we do that, the costs of other goods and services would also need to be 3x. Otherwise the PCs would be purchasing market things at deep discounts.

*Monty Haul-- I wonder if this term is still in use? It's from old AD&D days. A Monty Haul DM was one who awarded PCs with excessive GPs, gems, or magic items per encounter. The early Dragon magazine theorists said that it led players getting too spoiled-- or something. But the bigger issue was: encubrance. Not many wanted to bother with tracking it. So you had a party with 500 GPs each, constantly moving around, sleeping the woods, staying at inns, no place to leave things behind and... When they got to a town, they had 500gp each to spend. Had they been lugging them around the whole time? If so, how? A lot of it was about those dread, fell, and fun-dampening words: encumbrance calculations.

True too the spirit of Bushido, we will be strictly encumbrance in this game. It's another tactical consideration-- worth or not worth the additional AC or wealth tradeoff?

[jmacatty]

My experience is that On, not Budo is the limiting factor in level advancement.

[Marullus]

Three separate points:

1) Coin/Downtime: I'd rather cut the cost of Inns/Training to 1/3 than multiply the coin by 3X. That lets downtime periods be more affordable but doesn't hack the economy. Thoughts?

2) Budo/On: 3x XP means both 3x Budo/Shugendo and 3x On? Do we explicitly want that? For example, everyone in my game is at around 3 Budo/Shugendo. If we're doing 3x, that means that everyone will be at 10 and level up to Level 2 before the second half of the adventure. I think I could live with that, but it IS faster than I expected we'd go.

3) Budo House Rules: This post outlines the first real impact of our house rule on "half-Budo if you engaged a foe but aren't the one that defeated him." I like the rule. I think it had less impact than I expected, because the number of foes actually engaged was small. I was worried that everyone-engaging-everyone would make it balloon large (21 Budo was possible, half for everyone would be 10.5), but that's kind of what is proposed under #2 above (everyone getting to 10 Budo/On now). It also seems impactful that Taka and Eiji had to get into the combat but don't get any award for their success. What are your thoughts?

If I were doing this adventure with a Milestone reward system, I'd have you all reach level 2 at the end of the adventure in this valley (you're halfway there) and before you return to the War Camp, and with enough treasure that you could have a reasonable downtime at that point. If we want faster advancement, we can hit level 2 now (10/10xp) then by the end of the valley you would be halfway to level 3 (25/50xp). I'm honestly okay with either. What are your thoughts?

My experience is that On, not Budo is the limiting factor in level advancement.

...reasonable and true. I haven't looked at what On should be yet, but you get what I award for "eliminate the bandit camp" as a major threat, and if we are saying it is 3x, I can easily set it to 10 On if we want this to be a leveling point now. Otherwise, I need to go reread Book II guidelines to see what I set it to for a challenge of this type. (I am surprised that the Valley of Mists module doesn't give me Budo or On guidelines for its own adventures.)

[jemmus]

First of all I'll say that my idea about 3x Budo, 3x coin, and 3x costs was a derp. Doing that would keep everything at the same ratios, there'd be no point in tripling anything.

1) Coin/Downtime: I'd rather cut the cost of Inns/Training to 1/3 than multiply the coin by 3X. That lets downtime periods be more affordable but doesn't hack the economy. Thoughts?
That sounds good to me. We'd just have to decide how much to reduce. 1/2?

2) Budo/On: 3x XP means both 3x Budo/Shugendo and 3x On? Do we explicitly want that? For example, everyone in my game is at around 3 Budo/Shugendo. If we're doing 3x, that means that everyone will be at 10 and level up to Level 2 before the second half of the adventure. I think I could live with that, but it IS faster than I expected we'd go.
I think for play balance we'd need to go 3x for On also. That way we'd still be following what the Budo/Shugendo:On ratio that the designers decided on after playtesting and releasing a second edition. On seems hard enough to come by in any event.

3) Budo House Rules: This post outlines the first real impact of our house rule on "half-Budo if you engaged a foe but aren't the one that defeated him." I like the rule. I think it had less impact than I expected, because the number of foes actually engaged was small. I was worried that everyone-engaging-everyone would make it balloon large (21 Budo was possible, half for everyone would be 10.5), but that's kind of what is proposed under #2 above (everyone getting to 10 Budo/On now). It also seems impactful that Taka and Eiji had to get into the combat but don't get any award for their success. What are your thoughts?
I still like the rule of sharing Budo, rather than all of it going to the PC with the killing blow. In Ha's case you awarded half Budo for the guard he missed with the arrow. But not half for every bandit that the party killed. It seemed to work out well to me.

If I were doing this adventure with a Milestone reward system, I'd have you all reach level 2 at the end of the adventure in this valley (you're halfway there) and before you return to the War Camp, and with enough treasure that you could have a reasonable downtime at that point. If we want faster advancement, we can hit level 2 now (10/10xp) then by the end of the valley you would be halfway to level 3 (25/50xp). I'm honestly okay with either. What are your thoughts?
One vote for making the PCs slog some more before getting close to leveling up. Our NPC did most of the killing, and two of us got killed. I can't think of Toshizo as close to level 2 yet.

My experience is that On, not Budo is the limiting factor in level advancement.

...reasonable and true. I haven't looked at what On should be yet, but you get what I award for "eliminate the bandit camp" as a major threat, and if we are saying it is 3x, I can easily set it to 10 On if we want this to be a leveling point now. Otherwise, I need to go reread Book II guidelines to see what I set it to for a challenge of this type. (I am surprised that the Valley of Mists module doesn't give me Budo or On guidelines for its own adventures.)
I was thinking for awarding On for "Eliminate Notorious Threat" most times PCs have a significant and specific target and manage to eliminate it. But what's the definition of "notorious"? The rules specifically use finding and eliminating a gang of bandits as an example. If the PCs in the Honor or Death game manage to do that, I intend to award "notorious" On. Thoughts?

Another thing we could do is just reduce the number of Budo/Shugendo and On needed for each level by some percentage. Say, by 50%, 60%, or some other percentage.

[ffilz]

My brain is hurting to much to think about all the tinkering...

Making down time work better sounds like a good goal.

I agree, we aren't ready for level 2 yet.

[Marullus]

Question: Book one says:

1064.1e Overcoming Notorious Threat
Further guidelines for Gamesmasters are given in Book 2, on designing adventures.

I just flipped through all of Book II and can't find any such thing. Also, I can't keyword search for On because of its being a prolific letter combination in English.

Can anyone find the guidelines for establishing the On earned from a Notorious Threat?

[jemmus]

I searched for "notorious" and can't find any guidance in Book 2 either. It seems like there was an editing error.

[Marullus]

Agreed, low rank ronin Kentaro should earn On for effectively defeating a low rank samurai in what became a writing "contest." I'll refer to the rule quoted at the bottom.

The ninyo was trying to humiliate the rustic ronin, to distract attention away from his retainer Sawaguchi's embarrassing failure. I'm going to say "winning a contest" here gets On at the higher rate of "performances before a larger and more prestigious crowd." It wasn't a private "contest" at an inn or teahouse. It was before the much higher status ninyo and his samurai, Omi and Ito, and the kanunshi shrine priest. And, in case it wasn't obvious, Kentaro earned the shamed higher status ninyo's hatred and enmity. (Which, depending on what the group does along the way, may or may not come into play).

The value of the "artwork produced" is 10 silver. That was the ninyo's (somewhat) high price for having the letter delivered to Shinano was 10 silver. So the letter is worth 10 silver, and Kentaro gets 10 On. Please update your char sheet. (If you guys could maybe add another tab to your Excel char sheets with notes about your Budo/Shugendo and On awards, that would be nice. I'm tracking, but as the Japanese proverb says, "Even a monkey can miss and fall out of a tree."

1064.la Winning a Contest
Whether the competition is a flowery exhibition of Poetry at a
noble court, ora riotous drinking bout at the local tea house, winning
a contest of any kind is worth On. The Gamesmaster may award 1
point for spontaneous showings of talent among a limited audience.
Alternatively he may increase the reward for masterful performances
before a larger or more prestigious crowd. In this latter case, the
value of the presentation, as discussed in Book 2. under Artworks,
would be the amount of On awarded. The Gamesmaster may wish to
limit this opportunity to contests he puts in the Player Character‘s
way during the campaign, in order to prevent players from staging
constant little competitions among their own characters.

Wow, sweet! I'll take some enmity for 10 On.

What was the On award for visiting the Shrine?

Hoping these bandits are a 'notorious threat.'