Despair and Wisdom: Imperial March

It is that time.

Ask away.

I might not answer, though. Some things have to be kept for future games. And some things are just going to make me cry.

Damned onion-cutting ninjas.

What obstacles of adapting the new system did you feel you overcame so much that we might not have even noticed them?

What obstacles arose that you had not foreseen or feel were not cleanly overcome?

Fuck/Mary/Kill - Hana, Hana, or Hana?

(I'll admit at the start I expected them to all be one person playing multiple roles until you had a thread where they interacted with each other)

Edit: And, of course, great game! Thanks for doing it!

Utaku Mukai wrote: ↑

Thu Jul 04, 2024 12:18 am

What obstacles of adapting the new system did you feel you overcame so much that we might not have even noticed them?

What obstacles arose that you had not foreseen or feel were not cleanly overcome?

Fuck/Mary/Kill - Hana, Hana, or Hana?

(I'll admit at the start I expected them to all be one person playing multiple roles until you had a thread where they interacted with each other)

Edit: And, of course, great game! Thanks for doing it!

As to the first: I'm not sure there were any. There's a lot of...frustration...with 5E on Discord (and some off of it, since good friends and players are not necessarily on that platform); it's under fairly close scrutiny. I do look forward to players' responses about things, though. (Mostly. There're some things I screwed up; I imagine I'll be taking some deserved flak for them.)

As to the second: please see my edits to events while they were in progress. (Like I said, some things I screwed up.)

As to the third: Yes. (I did have the two of them. I think the dynamic at play among the three came out in discussions. I'm glad they survived; I think they're getting used again. I hope so, anyway.)

As to the last: Thank you!

Enjoyed the NPC interactions. Thanks for all the hard work there.

What is the one thing you think could have gone better?

Was there any time where we were off the mark? If so, what was it?

What would you change if you had to do it again?

Hida Masayuki wrote: ↑

Thu Jul 04, 2024 1:12 am

Enjoyed the NPC interactions. Thanks for all the hard work there.

What is the one thing you think could have gone better?

Was there any time where we were off the mark? If so, what was it?

What would you change if you had to do it again?

As to the first: thank you for joining!

For the second: there are definitely some parts of the rules-set I need to bone up on. The battle sequence...could have been improved.

For the third: not really, no. Y'all pretty much had it on target.

For the fourth: aside from the second point, above, I...would adjust the fail conditions. Player agency's important, and I didn't do as well at respecting that as I ought to have. Mea culpa. Things for next time, if I'm fortunate enough to be invited along again.

Thanks for putting in the work!

Most pleasant surprise we threw your way?

Favorite NPC to pilot?

Thanks! I know the backend is a lot of work, piloting a lot of NPCs is attention-draining, and event creation is art as well as science (well...math).

Sorry I couldn't follow up rumors or NPC threads as well as I'd like. Is Isawa-sama cursing not getting to Shippei the night before? XD

Usagi Kaigen wrote: ↑

Thu Jul 04, 2024 3:47 am

Thanks for putting in the work!

Most pleasant surprise we threw your way?

Favorite NPC to pilot?

In order:
You're welcome, and thank you for playing!

Pleasant surprise? Death Kaisha seemed to gel, which was good to see, and I appreciated that some of the rumors about some characters started getting pursued.

Favorite NPC actually came out to be Kumiko, followed by Osoroshii.

Isawa Mari wrote: ↑

Thu Jul 04, 2024 4:44 am

Thanks! I know the backend is a lot of work, piloting a lot of NPCs is attention-draining, and event creation is art as well as science (well...math).

Sorry I couldn't follow up rumors or NPC threads as well as I'd like. Is Isawa-sama cursing not getting to Shippei the night before? XD

Thank you, too!

No need to apologize for having a life outside, of course.

Undomiei isn't happy about Shippei, no. He's...annoyed...with several chui, but that one was the worst.

Meant to ask about Undomiel's name..being not terribly Rokugani and brought in from an entirely different franchise (well...as far as I know. Tolkien being a linguist means it may have been borrowed from somewhere else, certainly)

Isawa Mari wrote: ↑

Thu Jul 04, 2024 6:46 pm

Meant to ask about Undomiel's name..being not terribly Rokugani and brought in from an entirely different franchise (well...as far as I know. Tolkien being a linguist means it may have been borrowed from somewhere else, certainly)

It's possible I mis-hit the shift key when typing; the name's Undomiei. I don't recall that it had any particular punning meaning when I developed it.

As far as Tolkien goes...so far as I am aware, his studies did not extend to Japanese and related languages. (They didn't even extend across the breadth of Germanic languages, if memory serves.) For further reading, though, I can recommend work by any or all of Verlyn Flieger, Dmitra Fimi, Luke Shelton, and Douglas A. Anderson.

Well, typos/misprints that become canon are an L5R tradition. XD

What did you like most about the game narratively? What did you like least about the game narratively?

What did you like most about the game mechanically? What did you like least about the game mechanically?

What would you really like to see in the next game that wasn't in this game?



This game wouldn't have been possible without you, and I felt you'd feel left out if we didn't ask these questions for the world to see your thoughts on

Saibankan wrote: ↑

Fri Jul 05, 2024 2:27 pm

What did you like most about the game narratively? What did you like least about the game narratively?

What did you like most about the game mechanically? What did you like least about the game mechanically?

What would you really like to see in the next game that wasn't in this game?



This game wouldn't have been possible without you, and I felt you'd feel left out if we didn't ask these questions for the world to see your thoughts on

Tough ones, these.

Narratively, I ended up liking the Hanas. Kumiko's voice also surprised me. I think if we do time-skips again, we'll need to be clearer about them. And I probably ought to have more story between NPCs going on in the daily rumors, both to give verisimilitude and to hang more plot hooks for folks to grab onto.

Mechanically, I think things worked, overall. I've noted elsewhere that fail conditions need to be reworked, and I think that some of the players rolling for opponents might be toned down. (Might; it did make things lighter for us. There's a balance, I think.) We might also look at standardizing peoples' PFs somewhat, just to make our own lives easier.

This *was* an informal experiment, so trying out a lot of stuff this time was to be expected. We won't have so much going on next time, I think.

I've got ideas about next game, but if you want me to run alongside you, I probably oughtn't speak to them too much publicly. I do think Imperial agencies are a good way to go, though. And I look forward to seeing what all you or we do with the overall metagame.

I appreciate being asked along and am glad to have contributed!

Thanks for the game.

How was your time as being AGM?

Re: standardizing PF's

We never did when I was running, partly because character approval and setup is usually a busy enough time not to think of setting up even more PF threads. But I could see the utility in *not* having to remind people to set up a metagame thread, and having threads for X all called the same thing...possibly with the character name tacked on so it's obvious in notifications where you're headed. "Metagame rolls and links-Shiba Boyo" and the like. Writing oneself a script for the PF setup could make that all a relatively easy routine.

Cons: Instead of skimming PF and looking in the lit up forums, they're busy exploding your notifications because it's all replies on threads you started. (workaround, create an administrative account to do that setup from so notifications aren't pinging your main GM account) Maybe set-up a Private GM questions thread from main account. I know it was always a fight to get private questions in PF, where all GMs could see them, vs. PM which often was only to one, or ended up that way if someone hit Reply instead of Reply All.

With the workaround, my sense of organization rather likes the idea.

Hida Yoshiko wrote: ↑

Fri Jul 05, 2024 5:34 pm

Thanks for the game.

How was your time as being AGM?

Thank you for being in it!

There was some stress, as there always is. My own deficiencies are magnified by being in the copilot seat, but it *does* allow me to 1) see everything (and I'm a petty, gossipy person irl, so I like having the inside scoops) and 2) cater to such strengths as I do have.

Isawa Mari wrote: ↑

Fri Jul 05, 2024 5:36 pm

Re: standardizing PF's

We never did when I was running, partly because character approval and setup is usually a busy enough time not to think of setting up even more PF threads. But I could see the utility in *not* having to remind people to set up a metagame thread, and having threads for X all called the same thing...possibly with the character name tacked on so it's obvious in notifications where you're headed. "Metagame rolls and links-Shiba Boyo" and the like. Writing oneself a script for the PF setup could make that all a relatively easy routine.

Cons: Instead of skimming PF and looking in the lit up forums, they're busy exploding your notifications because it's all replies on threads you started. (workaround, create an administrative account to do that setup from so notifications aren't pinging your main GM account) Maybe set-up a Private GM questions thread from main account. I know it was always a fight to get private questions in PF, where all GMs could see them, vs. PM which often was only to one, or ended up that way if someone hit Reply instead of Reply All.

With the workaround, my sense of organization rather likes the idea.

When I've done it in the past--and I have; I just didn't think to do it this time--I've made use to unsubscribe to those threads. It helps a lot.