Revel in Despair (Saibankan Q&A)

[Saibankan]

Ask away as you sink into True Despair.

[Fukurokujin]

Most of what I'll say will be in the usual places, but this needs to be public:
Thank you for having me along again!

[Utaku Mukai]

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?

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

[Saibankan]

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?

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

1. Applying Advaantages and Disadvantages. At Kyuden Shika, I was like "Hey I trust you all to know whether it applies or not, but ask if you're unsure." While I like this level of trust, and I could see that working better at the tabletop level, it just put a huge bottleneck on events because people asked about every little thing just to be sure...or just didn't apply them if they didn't want to. Then at a different 5e game, the gms put every single advantage/disadvantage into every event...which does make sure they're all there, but it puts a novel block of text that is irrelevant to most people. Here I was like "Ok, as I approve characters, make a comprehensive list, then go in to each event and edit them in." I could've maybe streamlined a bit more by removing those posessed by those who dropped out, but this gave a bit of mystery as to who had exactly what, and if someone suddenly revived, it wasn't an issue.

Strife/Void Management: I think that containing them within longer rolling events was a good move. Certainly didn't hear as much whining about strife as in the past (Course those who were aggressively whining didn't come anyways) Will need more feedback from the players to determine if they felt strife/void points mattered or were irrelevant, but I feel like we've improved, and hope to keep improving.

2. Rumor system still needs work. GB put a lot of work into generating (Perhaps too) many named NPCs, and writing rumor storylines for each of them, and I think only the ronin XO really got any interest. It's been pointed out to me that releasing them all at the beginning gave too much for players to weed through, and it's tough to know ahead of time what plot hooks players will be interested in ahead of time. I feel like it would be sad to remove rumors entirely from l5r games, but I'm just not certain they're serving the purpose of generating roleplay. Saw a couple did, but would like to see more.

3. Fuck the Isawa for a magical experience, marry the Otomo for the status bump, Kill the Kakita so she doesn't duel me for doing 1 & 2

Thank you for playing, may we meet again in some other world soon.

[Hida Masayuki]

Strife/Void use did matter in some situations and that worked well for me.

The way advantages and disadvantages worked as intended and it was easier to keep track of them. This was great.

Rumors got away from me a bit, but more due to work schedule than the game itself.

I appreciated your guidance when I needed it.

[Utaku Mukai]

1. Applying Advaantages and Disadvantages. At Kyuden Shika, I was like "Hey I trust you all to know whether it applies or not, but ask if you're unsure." While I like this level of trust, and I could see that working better at the tabletop level, it just put a huge bottleneck on events because people asked about every little thing just to be sure...or just didn't apply them if they didn't want to. Then at a different 5e game, the gms put every single advantage/disadvantage into every event...which does make sure they're all there, but it puts a novel block of text that is irrelevant to most people. Here I was like "Ok, as I approve characters, make a comprehensive list, then go in to each event and edit them in." I could've maybe streamlined a bit more by removing those posessed by those who dropped out, but this gave a bit of mystery as to who had exactly what, and if someone suddenly revived, it wasn't an issue.

Yeah I think this game really hit a solid point with the Advantage/Disadvantage system. Kudos.

[Usagi Kaigen]

As always, if you run it, I will be there, god help me

Most pleasant surprise this game?

Oddest curveball?

[Isawa Mari]

Thanks! These things take a *lot* of work, and it's a bit uphill with the amount of the Fallenash community that dislikes 5e. You guys rolled with the smaller (but persistent) playerbase here, so I know there was some juggling to do along the way.

The Advantage/Disadvantage tweak really did seem to work. Much better than Shika's predictable set of "does this apply/not apply" with every event.

For non-event rolling, I think I'd also make a clear rule whether you're going with the "they apply when it makes sense" version or the "they only apply to rolls with their element" version of things (both are viable per RAW, as far as I can tell)

[Saibankan]

As always, if you run it, I will be there, god help me

Most pleasant surprise this game?

Oddest curveball?

1. The level of engagement with the metagame. In the past, metagames haven't gotten quite as much attention (or get hijacked by one guy). I think the scaling back of events and the adjusting of time where some sessions had a non-event day and an event day or just one big event day worked well. I was also glad to see that bigger multi-phase events worked well too. So definitely going forward, metagame stays for the "It always gives you something to do" factor, and events will be bigger, if less frequent.

2. I mean, how can Naked Yogo not win this list?

[Hida Yoshiko]

Thanks for the game.

How different was this game to the Kyuden Shika?

[Saibankan]

Thanks for the game.

How different was this game to the Kyuden Shika?

Summer break miai to autumn march to a land of horror? Pretty different I think we also improved both as gms and players. We all collectively had more experience with the system, and had tweaked some things that didn't work the first time out to make for a smoother play experience. Also I was solo gming for Kyuden Shika which was not smart at that player count. We do have a smaller player count this time. Some of that is people deciding that 5e is not for them, some from inevitable community shrinkage, some were eaten by rl no oni, and maybe some from people judging from the last game that they wanted nothing to do with this one, which is sad, but their choice.

We did have some good players in Kyuden Shika, some who came back some who did not, and maybe it's recency bias, but the crew that stuck with us were all fantastic. And those who were good at Shika and did not come back? Well, hopefully our paths will cross again some day. GB is going to chase after me with dog bear for a third game. And I might take some inspiration from the suggestions in due time. Muses are fickle things, so who knows what the future holds. They say that authors write to excorcise their demons: some succeed at the excocism to our deteriment, some fail to our delight, and some succeed...but then keep writing anyways. I think I've got one or two more demons tucked away. Stay tune