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Night10194 posted:Urban Jungle So this is Blacksad the RPG? Also, another DX question - is there a resource anywhere that lists all powers in an easy to compare format? The ordering in the book is really non-intuitive.
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Jan 24, 2019 17:29
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Angrymog posted:So this is Blacksad the RPG? Blacksad is definitely listed in the 'suggested media' section, though it's set a bit later than most of the material suggests. The timelines for the various cities do go up to the mid 50s, though, if you wanted to do post WWII campaign. Basically, any American film noir game you want to do set from 1919-195X will probably work out. And no, there's no index of DX powers, which is frustrating as hell. One of the principle issues with DX is organizational; the book is not a good teaching tool, even if the rules are well designed once you finally get your head around them.
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Jan 24, 2019 17:35
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Evil Mastermind posted:Honestly, I've never liked psionics in D&D for pretty much this reason. It doesn't fit high fantasy, and at the end of the day it's just "magic, but with a slightly different mechanic".
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Jan 24, 2019 18:01
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I like having arbitrary and varied systems of magic. I also just appreciate the fact that psionics at least diverges from the standard "wands and witches" sort of fantasy magic. There is a "feelie" element that's neat to having a different system of magic that's more than "you cast fireball, but call it pyrokinesis!" It's just rarely done well enough to justify having a whole other magic system.
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Jan 24, 2019 18:49
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Especially as one of the reasons magic systems are so difficult in the first place is because they often differ strongly in resolution and mechanics from normal game systems, though the trend in design seems to be moving away from that these days (and thank God for that, highly separated magic systems are the devil). The fewer subsystems you can get away with, the better, because every subsystem designed has to be tested and planned out on its own. If you add an MP system to one style of magic while the other works off a charge system, as per Psionics and Magic in D&D, that's two major resource systems that have to balance against one another, and that also (theoretically) balance against mundane abilities. You'd need a really good reason to justify introducing that kind of complication rather than just relegating the differences to flavor or minor mechanical changes.
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Jan 24, 2019 18:58
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Alien Rope Burn posted:I like having arbitrary and varied systems of magic. I also just appreciate the fact that psionics at least diverges from the standard "wands and witches" sort of fantasy magic. There is a "feelie" element that's neat to having a different system of magic that's more than "you cast fireball, but call it pyrokinesis!" I think this would shine a lot more if psions and wizards (and clerics and sorcerers and druids and and and) actually had different effects, rather than just different fluff and different systems for making them happen. Wanna turn into an animal? That's a really distinctive druid thing, right? Well, no, every caster can do it, it's just "turn into an animal with arcane power" or "turn into an animal through the blessing of your god" or "turn into an animal with your miiiind." Fireballs? Everybody gets those. Teleportation? Scrying? Buffs? Mind control? Illusions? Item creation? Everyone gets everything. It's painfully obvious looking at that list of "psionic disciplines," i.e. wizard schools run through a thesaurus. Psions are doomed to feel tacked-on because the authors can't help themselves from putting literally every single concept they've ever dreamed up on the wizard spell list.
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Jan 24, 2019 20:16
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Night10194 posted:Especially as one of the reasons magic systems are so difficult in the first place is because they often differ strongly in resolution and mechanics from normal game systems, though the trend in design seems to be moving away from that these days (and thank God for that, highly separated magic systems are the devil). The fewer subsystems you can get away with, the better, because every subsystem designed has to be tested and planned out on its own. If you add an MP system to one style of magic while the other works off a charge system, as per Psionics and Magic in D&D, that's two major resource systems that have to balance against one another, and that also (theoretically) balance against mundane abilities. You'd need a really good reason to justify introducing that kind of complication rather than just relegating the differences to flavor or minor mechanical changes. 3.5 was generally fairly good about scaling PP vs. spells per day. You had roughly the same amount of resources due to how power costs were scaled. The problem of course is scaling them against mundane abilities, and I think at this point we've gone into how badly they failed with that in excruciating detail many, many times. As far as alternate casting systems in D&D go, I really *want* to like Incarnum, since it's different enough to be interesting, but it's such a mechanical failure that I can't really.
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Jan 24, 2019 20:19
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megane posted:I think this would shine a lot more if psions and wizards (and clerics and sorcerers and druids and and and) actually had different effects, rather than just different fluff and different systems for making them happen. Wanna turn into an animal? That's a really distinctive druid thing, right? Well, no, every caster can do it, it's just "turn into an animal with arcane power" or "turn into an animal through the blessing of your god" or "turn into an animal with your miiiind." Fireballs? Everybody gets those. Teleportation? Scrying? Buffs? Mind control? Illusions? Item creation? Everyone gets everything. It's painfully obvious looking at that list of "psionic disciplines," i.e. wizard schools run through a thesaurus. Psions are doomed to feel tacked-on because the authors can't help themselves from putting literally every single concept they've ever dreamed up on the wizard spell list. Yeah, I think stuff like Warlocking or Binding or Incarnum from 3.5 are closer to good... ideas for that sort of thing. (Incarnum wasn't well-done, but I feel like it could have been with further development.)
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Jan 24, 2019 20:54
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 Rifts World Book 20: Canada, Part 10 - "A long warning will be something like, 'There's gonna be a lot of dying in the next few minutes. If you're smart you'll get out right now, and find someplace safe. And don't try to stop us.'."  Return of the cockbot. So, like other Rifts books, this serves as a "stealth splatbook", like Lone Star was for mutant animals or Mindwerks was regarding crazies. This time, we're going to focus on Headhunters - badass mercs with badass cyber-eyes and badass cyber-arms. Basically, if you're looking to play your Deathloks, your Cables, your Strykers... oh, you probably don't know who Stryker was. He was perhaps the most '90s comic character ever, you probably never heard of him. It's okay if you haven't, only true '90s comics fans know about him, he was in a series called Codename: Strykeforce. Like half the team died, there was a guy covered entirely in swords, it was pretty rad.  A Wilk's rifle? I have to doubt her techno-merc bonafides. ... so, time to move on to talking about techno-mercs. For some reason, we get nearly a page of a team of headhunters waking up and dealing with a hangover. Nothing actually happens, it just, uh, fills space pretty well. We're told human mercs that rely heavily on technology are called "headhunters" because... they are, shuddup. They love fighting and seek a good death because... they do, shuddup. And they love technology because... you know what? Shuddup.  Apparently they only accept "outsiders" into their little Universal Soldier subculture if they really love fighting and aren't afraid of nothin'. They aren't racist, just combat... ist? There are a lot of generic generalities to go around, and they basically do any shady or fightin' job or... hard labor? Sure, so, they do anything for money. But especially fites, boss, when we gonna fites?!  "Why I'd kill these Coalition guys? Because they're Coalition, guys." Speaking of fites, we get a notorious mercenary company of headhunters called "The Slaughter House Brigade". They, uh, are in Canada, and have hundreds of headhunters, and... yeah, we get a detailed breakdown of their force, but nothing about their leadership, tactics, activities, jobs, members, etc. A lot of this seems to be filler about killers, and given we're just about to get a class reprint, it doesn't help.   "Assassin" really just means "killing people from above". Speaking which, let's get to those:
 Can you identify all the Rifts callbacks here?
 Weeaboo evolved. Lastly, we have the Momano Headhunter (9%). These are sometimes-psychic headhunters that specialize in fighting magic and monsters with techno-wizard bionics. Wait, who invented that? Apparently they've also weeaboos, because "Momano" is taken for the Japanese term for... wait, I don't think that's a Japanese word. Well, don't tell the book that. And they love haikus and calligraphy and go...and... nnnngh... honor. weeee it's the 90s it's time to badly appropriate banzai banzai. They have a 50% chance of having psionics and about a 10% chance of getting the powers of a psychic R.C.C. as well, but lose some skills if they do. Mind Melter / Momano Headhunter hybrids in particular get penalized into the Earth's core and basically end up sucking in two different ways instead of being alright in one! Finally, magic and tech combine to... fire sharp sticks. They don't have too much unique other than psychic powers innately - most of their schtick comes from specialized cyborg abilities. Other than the basics (adding holy water to a sprayer, silver bullets to existing guns, hydraulic stake stabber, etc.), they can get techno-wizard bionics. Some of these are near-pointless, like the ability to magically make a cyber-blade silver - why not just get a silver blade implanted to start? A sunbeam blaster that does... 1d6+2 damage... and only to creatures weak against sunlight. (Vampires generally have 50+ HP.) There's a variety of energy weapons that do trash for damage, electric fists or a flaming sword that raise your melee damage from "crap" to "slightly less crap", and a stake launcher that lets you stake at a distance. Of all the things, about the only one that's really unique is the stake launcher, and you don't need that built into your arm. Despite the idea of techno-wizard bionics sounding like they'd be cool and unique, most are generic energy weapons that are interchangeable with regular weapons save for the fact you can reload them with psychic power and meditation. There's no summoning circuits in your arm, or magical shields built in, or anything that's really unique and does something tech couldn't normally do. You could have feet that let you walk on water, or a slowness field, or something, at least, but no, it's as standard as imaginable. Perez's cool art is criminally underutilized, as a result. So, the best of the lot is the robonerd, because he has unique, functional mechanics, but of the rest, the only other one that's any good is the assassin. You won't get to play the assassin RAW, though, it's pretty much just the robonerd. Next: Who's a fascist boy? Who's a fascist boy?!
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Jan 25, 2019 03:59
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Alien Rope Burn posted:So, like other Rifts books, this serves as a "stealth splatbook", like Lone Star was for mutant animals or Mindwerks was regarding crazies. This time, we're going to focus on Headhunters - badass mercs with badass cyber-eyes and badass cyber-arms. Basically, if you're looking to play your Deathloks, your Cables, your Strykers... oh, you probably don't know who Stryker was. He was perhaps the most '90s comic character ever, you probably never heard of him. It's okay if you haven't, only true '90s comics fans know about him, he was in a series called Codename: Strykeforce. Like half the team died, there was a guy covered entirely in swords, it was pretty rad. Stryker had like three right arms, didn't he?
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Jan 25, 2019 04:28
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Dawgstar posted:A nice touch from earlier editions was Scorpion really love spicy foods. Diced up ghost pepper level stuff. They serve it to those who've taken the Scorpion's hospitality (that they also want to troll) and sick back and smirk as the person gets their tongue burned off. What're they gonna do? Complain? Wonder what happens when they ask for seconds.
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Jan 25, 2019 05:16
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I don't think it's very clever for members of a clan that everybody knows loves to poison people to feed their guests spicy food that can make them sick and would make it easy to disguise the taste of poison. Especially if they're surrounded by well-armed enemies who are champing at the bit to get a decent excuse to eat their lands. If anything, Grandma Bayushi's Five Alarm Chili would be a calculated insult.
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Jan 25, 2019 05:37
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Ratoslov posted:I don't think it's very clever for members of a clan that everybody knows loves to poison people to feed their guests spicy food that can make them sick and would make it easy to disguise the taste of poison. Especially if they're surrounded by well-armed enemies who are champing at the bit to get a decent excuse to eat their lands. If anything, Grandma Bayushi's Five Alarm Chili would be a calculated insult. No one ever accused anything the Scorpion are described as doing as being the result of people who put any real thought about how other people would realistically react to their bullshit.
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Jan 25, 2019 05:54
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Can I jury-rig an enemy robot for a 10% chance to instakill?Ghost Leviathan posted:Wonder what happens when they ask for seconds. The Lone Badger fucked around with this message at 06:08 on Jan 25, 2019 |
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Jan 25, 2019 06:06
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So for this new awesome merc company, did they give us a breakdown of it using the company creation rules from the Mercs book?
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Jan 25, 2019 06:09
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I hope it's okay if I post a DoubleCross question here, since I can't find a thread for it. The pure Morpheus power True Alchemy. Does it stack with itself? If I have it at level 3, could I give a sword +15 attack power for a scene by using it three times?
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Jan 25, 2019 06:15
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Kaza42 posted:I hope it's okay if I post a DoubleCross question here, since I can't find a thread for it. I believe there's nothing stopping it doing so, no. Though you'd use all 3 uses and eat 12 Encroach for doing so. It's an interesting question since it specifically says 'this may be declared at any time.'
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Jan 25, 2019 06:39
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Young Freud posted:Stryker had like three right arms, didn't he? Yes. He was what if Cable had triple the cyber-arms and a ponytail, how cool would that be. Dawgstar posted:So for this new awesome merc company, did they give us a breakdown of it using the company creation rules from the Mercs book? Nope. Here's the entire writeup. Rifts World Book 20: Canada posted:The Slaughter House Brigade The Lone Badger posted:Can I jury-rig an enemy robot for a 10% chance to instakill? Well, you have to "fix" it. Presumably that means it has to be broken first, but how broken would be up to the GM, I suppose. Alien Rope Burn fucked around with this message at 06:50 on Jan 25, 2019 |
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Jan 25, 2019 06:46
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Nope. Here's the entire writeup. I didn't think so. It'd be interesting to see how much of CJ's stuff still gets used in a featured way after he left.
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Jan 25, 2019 07:06
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Dawgstar posted:I didn't think so. It'd be interesting to see how much of CJ's stuff still gets used in a featured way after he left. Phase World, Mercenaries and Juicer Uprising are the books that get ongoing impact - Phase World actually comes to dominate the Dimension Book line, Mercenaries gets a number of follow-up books (Merc Adventures, Merc Ops, MercTown, Naruni Wave 2), and the Juicer Uprising has a continued but low-ebb impact on the metaplot. Underseas and South America mostly remain static hinterlands, however. So he actually had a pretty big impact on the line. Bill Coffin and Carl Gleba are the only two other writers I can think of that come close.
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Jan 25, 2019 08:20
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Phase World, Mercenaries and Juicer Uprising are the books that get ongoing impact - Phase World actually comes to dominate the Dimension Book line, Mercenaries gets a number of follow-up books (Merc Adventures, Merc Ops, MercTown, Naruni Wave 2), and the Juicer Uprising has a continued but low-ebb impact on the metaplot. Underseas and South America mostly remain static hinterlands, however. I'm glad that the most boring Dimension gets to dominate.
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Jan 25, 2019 08:27
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Emerald Empire: Town and Gown A town is considered to be any settlement with a population between a few hundred and 10,000. Anything less is a village. Towns, while individually less influential culturally, are far more numerous than cities and as a result have about the same weight, taken as a whole, on Rokugani life. Towns tend to develop largely based on the needs of trade rather than defense, and are usually built on trade routes and rivers or near good farmland. Some towns are built around a defensive keep or watchtower, but most are villages that got big. While no more planned in their growth than cities, they are usually less chaotically laid out due to being smaller. They tend to be less cramped than cities, with fewer demands placed on their development by lords, and so buildings usually have some space between them. However, pedestrians usually stick to the alleys and back roads, as the main roads belong to cart traffic, which isn't safe to walk in. Towns are rarely subdivided by district, though some can be. The wealthy and powerful will live by the court and estate of the local lord or magistrate, usually the best defended area, while hinin will live in a seperate settlement, usually downwind of town. Buildings are smaller and less stone is used, with most being no more than two stories. Cities are run by a local magistrate or feudal lord, with the prestige of the role varying with the town's reputation and the samurai's last job. Being put in charge of an obscure remote town is often a punishment for incompetent or untrustworthy samurai who have not actually committed major faults. Magistrates usually live in a manor house in town, to have better access to the locals, while samurai lords often live in an estate outside town or in an isolated part of the town, especially if they view their community as beneath them. Crime in towns tends to be smaller and more local in scale, but similar to that of cities. Large syndicates may have representation, but only for specific reasons. An opium cartel may be keep tabs on a town they use for smuggling, for example. Most crime is instead organized assaults or robberies. However, blasphemous cults are more often found in towns than cities, away from the more focused eyes of the Emerald Magistrates. Now, specific locations! Otosan Uchi is the oldest actual city in the Empire, though the Isawa settlements predate it. It was originally a modest village where the Kami fell to earth, and is now the officially largest and most populous city in the Empire. Ryoko Owari Toshi probably covers greater land and has more people, mind you, but few would be rude enough to say so. The city is divided into three main areas: the Toshisoto ('outer districts'), the Ekohikei ('inner districts' which includes the Seppun Hill) and the Forbidden City. The inner districts are protected by the Enchanted Wall and date back to the first century, having been designed jointly by all the clans. They are more organized and structured than the more organically grown outer districts. An outer wall was begun, but never finished, and at this point has fallen into disrepair and begun crumbling in places due to the frequent earthquakes. The outer districts largely belong to heimin and low-ranking samurai, and have several criminal gangs, while the inner districts are dominated by high status samurai and their servants. The Great Clans maintain embassies in the inner city, all beautiful, and it is also home to the Imperial Museum of Antiquities, the Temple to the Kami and the Hito Water Gardens. Seppun Hill is the most venerated location in the Ekohikei, a sacred and unspoiled hill where the holy woman Seppun met the eight Kami. Even by Rokugani standards, the architecture around it and the rest of the inner city is highly traditional and conservative. The Forbidden City, built for the first Hantei, is said to be manifest perfection. The city suffers frequent (if small) earthquakes due to the fact that the local earth kami are still agitated by the Fall of the Kami. This plus the ocean and occasional typhoons have caused natural tunnels to form under the city. They have been used by many secret groups of criminals, outlaws, samurai and even Emperors over the years. Many manmade rooms and complexes are hidden within the tunnels, including an underground lake that local criminals use as a market. The city's districts are each run by an appointed governor, with outer districts changing their names to match the governor's and the four inner districts remaining unchanged. They are considered equal in rank to provincial daimyo, reporting to the Sentaku Tribunal of the Imperial bureaucracy. The Otomo created the Tribunal in the 400s, and its most important job is controlling access to the Ekohikei and Forbidden City, ensuring the Court is not overrun with people. It has total authority within its domain, overridden only by the Emerald Champion or Emperor. quote:Otosan Uchi Rumors The Enchanted Wall, also called the Miwaku Kabe, was built during the First War by order of Hantei himself. He set the Crane, Crab, Ki-Rin and Phoenix to the task, to hold against the forces of Fu Leng. Its blessings proved effective, and ever since it has withstood anything the local earth kami have thrown at it. Due to the work of the Isawa shugenja involved in the construction, all four sides incorporate mystic powers that have kept them perfectly maintained. The Southern Gate is the main gate to the Forbidden City, a massive torii arch of pure, sacred crystal. It is said the arch glows in the presence of the Shadowlands Taint, but it is unclear if it is true; there have been no recorded instances of it glowing after the first century. The Eastern Wall is said to draw strength from the glory of all those that have stood to defend it, and golden kanji inscribed on its surface bear the name of all who have died in its defense. Common belief holds that their spirits live within the wall, ready to defend the city in times of need. The Southern Wall was consecrated by the shugenja Isawa Naigama and his students, and when Fu Leng's armies assaulted the city, the wall is said to have come to life to strike them down, or at least made them vanish without trace. The Asahina artisans have tried to determine what actually happened over the centuries, but the spirits of the wall refuse to say anything about it. The Western Wall is said to contain the bound spirits of the Shadowlands monsters that died attacking the city during the First War, and sometimes the wall emits a faint wailing noise, audible in the nearby outer districts. Many shugenja have studied it over the centuries, but no one has ever been able to tell if it was dangerous or not. People prefer not to live near it. The Northern Wall was actually destroyed by the armies of Fu Leng and had to rebuilt. While it is officially equal to the other three in power and prestige, it has never shown any supernatural properties since its reconstruction. It was mostly built by the Crab, and it is full of tunnels, mazes, traps and ambush zones, serving almost as a prototype for the later Kaiu Wall. We seem to be missing the adventure seed for Otosan Uchi, possibly because the Forbidden City got one last chapter. Next time: Ryoko Owari Toshi and Khanbulak
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Jan 25, 2019 14:00
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Mors Rattus posted:Emerald Empire: Rice Balls Beriberi (Vitamin B12 deficiency) was a major issue in countries that love white rice. In the historical Edo period, beriberi was called the city disease. The second to last Shogun, Tokugawa Iemochi, died of beriberi. Several decades later, his wife, the aunt of Emperor Meiji, also died of beriberi. Beriberi was the scourge of the Imperial Japanese Navy during the late 19th century. Until they added a bunch of barley to the naval rations, every long distance voyage with the Imperial Japanese Navy had well over a dozen dead sailors from beriberi. During the Russo-Japanese war, beriberi killed almost half as many Japanese soldiers as the entire Russian army.
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Jan 25, 2019 15:05
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Emerald Empire: City of Statistics Ryoko Owari Toshi has a lot of names. It is Journey's End, because it worked to stop the expansionist Crab in the 400s. It is the City of Green Walls, because of the green limestone used to build its defenses. It is the City of Stories, because of its cosmopolitan people. However, most often, it is the City of Lies, and its culture is largely based on the fact that it has a very powerful burakumin population tending the gigantic poppy fields outside the walls, and the extremely strong and corrupt firefighter gangs within. The Scorpion tolerate both in their rule over the city, which serves as the Empire's sole source of opium. The clan has had to organize the city into three massive cartels, each controlled by one of the Bayushi, Shosuro or Soshi families. The city is divided into six quarters - the Fishers' Quarter where most of the heimin live, centered on the wastern half of the Bay of Drowned Honor, the Merchant Quarter which handles shipping in three huge wharves, the Temple Quarter that is home to the immense Temples of Daikoku and Amaterasu, the Noble Quarter where most of the local Scorpion nobles hold court and live, the Licensed Quarter of Teardrop Island that serves as the city's pleasure district, and the Leatherworker's Quarter, which exists outside the southwestern wall and serves both to make leather and be a waste collection center and crematorium. The cartels run the entire city and most of the Empire's opium trade, with the rest being made primarily of Mantis and Tortoise holdings elsewhere. The class structure that holds in most of Rokugan doesn't quite work properly in Ryoko Owari. Merchants and crafters hold power well beyond their social rank due to their wealth, and the firefighters run entire portions of the city. The merchants dare not complain too loudly of extortion, as everything is done with kickbacks to the elite Thunder Guard, the personal forces of the governor. They keep the peace, but do not enforce justice. Rather, they prevent riots, violence and disruption of life. Governor Shosuro Hyobu is fine with the rank corruption, especially because pretty much every guard and noble is making illegal money off it. Even the hinin are too powerful. Their job, moving the dung and trash out to fuel the poppy fields, means they have far more wealth and influence than any other hinin in the entire Empire. Some even dare sneer in the vague direction of samurai. The Licensed Quarter is worth noting. It takes up the entirety of Teardrop Island, a densely populated island in the center of the city bay. It is open to anyone of any social status, and tradition says one protects one's anonymity by the wearing of basket hats. All weapons must be left at the dock, in theory for polishing. The island is home to many geisha houses, opium dens and sake houses, including at least one illegally run by gaijin. Of course, this is merely where it is legal and licenses; off the island, the opium still flows like water if you know where to look. The island is lit at night by red lanterns, giving the entire area a red cast that makes it feel unreal, to better allow samurai to drop their facades without shame. Our NPC is Shosuro Hyobu, Corrupt Governor. She runs the place by virtue of her marriage to its last governor, but she is no less a Scorpion for that, and she is the iron-fisted master of the Shosuro cartel. The city is an unruly mass of chaos because she prefers it that way - a just, orderly city would not provide the same societal outlet that Ryoko Owari does, and would destroy the economic benefits of the opium trade, which could devastate the entire Empire. Hyobu is a patient woman, fiercely intelligent and highly protective of her son, Jocho. She is more than willing to overlook the minor excesses of her people and visitors, but she dutifully records them for her clan, just in case. She sees herself as the spider at the center of the web that is Ryoko Owari Toshi. No rumors, but we do get an adventure seed! The PCs learn that Shosuro Jocho, son of Governor Shosuro Hyobu, has died of opium overdose. This is a deeply shameful death, threatening to undermine the influence of the entire Shosuro family in the city, for it is a sure sign of weakness. The circumstances of the death are unusual, however, and the PCs are tasked with discovering the truth. As they do, it becomes clear that someone is sabotaging their work. Witnesses are fearful, evidence goes missing, the PCs suspect they are being watched. Ultimately, via witness interrogation or examination of the body, they can learn that Jocho was poisoned, and may trace the poison back to his close friend, Shosuro Giichi. The truth is that Giichi murdered Jocho to weaken Hyobu's influence, knowing it would look awful for a Shosuro to die of their own product, especially the son of the local family leader. He hopes to fill the power void this death leaves while maneuvering for Hyobu's position. He will offer to reward the PCs if his plan succeeds, should they conceal the truth. However, if they don't accept, he will preemptively accuse one of them of the murder, which several of his influential Scorpion allies will testify to. The PCs will need not only to prove Giichi's guilt but also clear their own names, in a city where everyone has an agenda. Khanbulak literally means City of the Khan in the old tongue of the Moto family, and it is their chief city, the beginning of the Sand Road and the westernmost city in all of Rokugan. Half of it technically lies outside Imperial borders, making it one of the only places in the Empire where gaijin merchants can legally trade their wares. The city is at least as large as the Shinjo capital city, and its prestige and wealth have fueled the growth of the Moto family's political and military power. Other members of the clan now wonder if the Moto will attempt to seize the title of clan champion, currently held by the Shinjo. The city's walls look over the empty wastes that eventually lead to the Burning Sands, al-Zawira and the Ivory Kingdoms, serving as the end of both the gaijin trade routes of the clan - the Sand Road to the Burning Sands and the Ki-Rin's Road to the Ivory Kingdoms. It is the capital of the Moto and seat of the White Guard, the official border patrol. Within the walls are massive columns from which are suspended immense, beautiful tapestries, which form the walls of the Moto family palace. Despite or perhaps because the city is the seat of Moto power, it is considered a very hard post for Utaku or Ide samurai, who see themselves as closer to mainstream Rokugani society. The rare Great Clan ambassadors to the city consider it a dead end posting for their careers. Except for Crab and Dragon ambassadors, most are forced to find new lives in the city for themselves when their jobs end, for those that return home are inevitably viewed with disdain by their clan. While Khanbulak may have grown wealthy on trade, Rokugan remains an insular and xenophobic society, seeing the outwards-facing city as a clear aberration. Besides the uncouth Moto, the city is also home to huge, shifting tent city outside the walls, the primary gathering place for both Empire and gaijin merchants, especially those from the Sand Road and Ki-Rin's Road, but even beyond. They mingle freely with the Moto, who station many of their more hot-tempered soldiers in the area to avoid offending the more traditional families of the Unicorn while allowing these fierce, passionate warriors to commune with their steppe heritage. Khanbulak is a harmonious mixture of civilized and uncivilized, much like its ruling family. While the Moto are samurai, they see little wrong with bargaining with merchants as their ancestors once did, and foreign goods and people are common. When the sun sets, all foreigners must move outside the walls, including the Ujik tribes that have not yet sworn themselves to the Moto khan and officially accepted the Kami Shinjo's offer to join her clan. It is considered a demand of honor, but is usually seen as a practical matter, making the city easier to guard. It is also an important way to handle the law. Gaijin are not, technically, legal in the Empire. They are officially barred, and the city's authority is legally considered to extend only to within its walls. The local priests bless the city every morning, proclaiming that all within the walls are citizens of the Empire in homage to Hantei. Any gaijin discovered inside the city after sunset are officially to be killed mercilessly. Our NPC is Moto Rurame, Restless Commander. She is the Noyan of the Scarlet Banners and sister of Moto Ogodei, the khan of the Moto family. She sees Khanbulak as a shackle on the Moto. The Scarlet Banners are a mingghan of the White Horde of the Moto, patrollers of the city and the lands north and east of it, but she hates the stationary nature of the job. She is a Moto traditionalist, a believer that the family should return to their Ujik roots and ride out from the city to their ancestral steppe. She sees the Ide family as emblematic of the weakness of the Unicorn, sycophants who would give up everything that makes the Horde strong in order to pacify the weak and soft Rokugani. However, she currently remains loyal to her brother and oversees the safety of Khanbulak as though it were one of the traditional encampments of the Ujik. She encourages her soldiers to wrestle in the evenings and to cook and eat red meat. No rumors again, but our adventure seed: While in Khanbulak for whatever reason one evening, the PCs run into a gaijin caravan officer with bodyguards. He has remained within the walls in blatant violation of the law and is meeting with a Moto and an Ide samurai. Honor demands that they and the PCs should report the gaijin and ensure he is killed. If the PCs confront the gaijin, the Moto pleads with them to allow things to slide - the gaijin is swearing loyalty to the Unicorn, the samurai says. The PCs should be able to tell that the location and timing are not exactly auspicious for such an oath and that everyone involved seems quite nervous. If the PCs refuse to accept the lie, the Moto will go as far as threats of violence, and the two samurai may offer to cut the PCs in on their deal or otherwise reveal the truth by accident - the merchant is selling them a large number of slaves, which are illegal in the Empire. The two Unicorn and the gaijin are all aware of the penalties for their crimes and will become desperate if the PCs won't take a deal. If the PCs have not gotten their names, the trio may flee, possibly leading to an evening chase through the Moto city. However, if they think the PCs can identify them for the magistrates, they and the bodyguards will grow violent. The gaijin trader has a bottle containing an alchemical mixture that, when broken, will create a cloud of obscuring smoke. Next time: The Terror of the Kolat
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Jan 25, 2019 15:40
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golden bubble posted:Beriberi (Vitamin B12 deficiency) was a major issue in countries that love white rice. In the historical Edo period, beriberi was called the city disease. The second to last Shogun, Tokugawa Iemochi, died of beriberi. Several decades later, his wife, the aunt of Emperor Meiji, also died of beriberi. Beriberi was the scourge of the Imperial Japanese Navy during the late 19th century. Until they added a bunch of barley to the naval rations, every long distance voyage with the Imperial Japanese Navy had well over a dozen dead sailors from beriberi. During the Russo-Japanese war, beriberi killed almost half as many Japanese soldiers as the entire Russian army. Fun fact, beriberi can pretty much be prevented by eating brown rice instead of white. Brown rice was considered sub par and inferior due to its color so people ate white rice as a matter of pride. It's similar to the German aversion to corn, which led to POW riots during WWII because it was associated with pig feed.
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Jan 25, 2019 15:48
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Brown rice also takes loving forever to cook. IIRC, Beriberi was a scourge of the IJN because a diet heavy in white rice was put out there as a sort of "king's shilling" to join up. The peasantry was so oppressed that they didn't even get to keep any of the rice they farmed, subsisting on millet and barley.
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Jan 25, 2019 15:54
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OvermanXAN posted:No one ever accused anything the Scorpion are described as doing as being the result of people who put any real thought about how other people would realistically react to their bullshit. They were Wick's pet clan...
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Jan 25, 2019 17:08
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Emerald Empire: What If The Kolat Sucked Less? Red Horn Village is located in the southeast of the Dragon Heart Plains. It is a minor center of trade and diplomacy between the Lion, Unicorn and Phoenix clans, and indeed takes its name from the constant Phoenix presence there. Samurai of those clans are frequent travelers in the area, as it forms a nexus of roads to more populated parts of their lands. The Isawa maintain a permanent embassy in town, a trade center named the House of the Jade Dawn. Red Horn is also seen as a vacation destination for certain types of people, as it has several gambling houses. It has a small hinin village and several noble houses for local samurai, forming a prosperous if not overly large town. In truth, much of it is a facade, despite the large amount of legitimate business that goes through the town. The House of the Jade Dawn is named in reference to Amaterasu, but not in her honor - rather, it is referring to her as the greatest foe of humanity. The heretical alliance of sects known as the Kolat controls the village, with nearly all permanent residents playing some part in the conspiracy, whether they know it or not, from the hinin to the local Isawa and Shinjo nobles. The Kolat's members carefully watch all samurai that come to the village, subtly questioning them to determine their piety and their loyalty to the Emperor, to see if they might be useful to the group. The Kolat, like the Empire, date back to the Fall of the Kami. Where others bow to Heaven, the Kolat chafe under the rule of those descended from literal gods. Their ultimate goal is simple: overthrow the Hantei and create a world in which humanity rules itself, free of the rules and blood of the Kami. Thus, they have long established a network of spies, agents and assassins, protecting themselves with complex ciphers. Perhaps the deadliest of the Kolat's tools are sleeper agents, who operate under assumed identities for years on end, even decades, to collect information and wait for orders to do something more dangerous. These spies are trained to resist torture, and Red Horn Village serves as the nerve center for their network of communications. No one is really sure how far the influence of the Kolat actually goes, however - even its members. They could be a tiny conspiracy or a huge one, but their secrecy and the fact that they're made of several different aligned sects means no one can be truly certain. Our NPC is Chinoko, Deceitful Geisha. She was born to poverty, taking easily to crime and intrigue to escape her lot. She despised the Celestial Order, which shat on hinin like her endlessly, and when she was offered a chance to join the Kolat, she jumped at it, learning the arts of espionage and assassination. She now disguises her muscular body in fine silk and exotic jewelery from the Unicorn lands, and her skills as a geisha are top notch, but this is merely a front for her true work. From Red Horn, she controls a small empire of illegal gambling houses, opium dens and prostitution rings, commanding a number of sleeper agents as her eyes, ears and occasionally knives across the north of the Empire. No rumors again, but adventure seed: One of the PCs discovers a mysterious, ciphered message in their belongings, challenging but not impossible to decode. It is a Kolat message, containing an invitation for the PC to join their war on Heaven's order. It is a test and a trap. The Kolat expect that the PC will run to their daimyo and tell them about the Kolat. If they do, the Kolat spies in said daimyo's household will note the lord's reaction, carefully scrutinizing the group for sympathies to the Kolat. By having the lord semi-publically express disdain for a 'secret sect,' they may have revealed a few other samurai actually worth recruiting. If one or more PCs actually take the invitation, however, they could be given any kind of mission the GM desires. If they are particularly competent or placed well for the Kolat's needs, they may even be inducted as sleeper agents. The GM must determine, either way, what the sect's plans for the area and the PCs actually are, for surely it does not end here. Now, we're going to talk about harbors. Harbors are safe havens from high water and pirates, and ports built at a harbor, river or sea, are vital protectors of trade as well as whatever their other focus is - fishing, defense, shipbuilding, that kind of thing. Many villages and even cities would starve within a few decades if not for port trade networks for shipping, and the harbor towns and cities are vital. Local daimyos will set the governors and magistrates to carefully oversee trade and licensing, and while many low-level bureaucrats can be easily bribed to overlook small infractions, magistrates are usually either more honest or more expensive. Most harbors are part of bustling towns or cities in their own right, providing plenty of jobs for heimin. Port design is heavily influenced by local geography, and natural ports are often extended with breakwaters of wood or stone to protect against the waves, or even the building of seawalls to protect against storms and tsunami. Wharfs, docks and quays are made from wood or stone promenades along the natural coast or artificial basin of the harbor to allow ships to tie up, with piers used in shallow water or to increase the capacity of the docks extended out into deeper waters. When a ship arrives, the agents of the local magistrate will head out to inspect cargo and assess tariffs. After that, the dockworkers start unloading. Some ports will include warehouses and shops on small islands, to make the most of the coastline space, using wooden bridges to connect them to the mainland and each other. When these prove insufficient, buildings may be built on top of wooden stilts anchored underwater. Inland, the administrative facilities for licensing and flags sit, also serving to provide charts and maps to ships. Shops performing maintenance and providing parts for repairs are also available, along with storage facilities and merchants selling livestock, food and even soil or seeds. Heading further inland, you will find the businesses that cater to merchants and sailors, such as inns and bars. These are rarely visited by the upper classes, who see them as dishonorable and crude, and workers typically live in the town or city proper rather than the harbor district. A port's main function will determine a lot of its form. Fishing ports, for example, will be designed for smaller craft. Rokugani commercial fishing primarily uses gillnetting and cormorant fishing. Gillnetters will head out with a net to catch saltwater fish, typically small schooling fish such as sardines, halfbeak or horse mackerel along coastlines and larger fish such as tuna, salmon and snapper out on the open sea. Cormorant fishers use trained birds to catch freshwater fish, usualy salmon and trout. Gillnetters use small boats, usually with 3-4 person crews, and will use chains of 4-6 gillnets, each upwards of sixty feet wide. The openings are sized based on the fish in season, as is placement. Cormorant fishing relies on small rowboats, usually with 2-3 person crews. A smoking torch is held above the boat, which sets out in the hours before dawn, and the bird handler will hold onto ropes tied to the necks of 5-10 birds. These are tight enough to prevent the cormorants from swallowing the fish, and the torch makes the fish disturbed and easier to catch. The handler will reel in a cormorant that gets a fish, retrieving it and sending the bird back out. With good handlers, this can net over 150 fish an hour. Fish rot quickly, so fishing ports have high docking capacity to ensure the catch is fresh and good, not rotting in the nets. Even so, they always reek of rotting fish. These ports will have extensive cold storage, salting and preservation facilities alongside the fish markets. Mountain river-fish ports will make heavy use of ice, as do some large Phoenix fishing ports, which get their ice from the practice of student shugenja calling on the kami of the air and water. Military ports focus on providing security and deterring bandits and piracy. The soldiers will assist the magistrates in inspections as well. They have fortified and secured berths, so they have reduced room for merchant vessels, and they need to have barracks and armories. Most military river ports also keep a bridge gate downriver staffed with soldiers as part of their antipiracy efforts, while sea ports will have extensive facilities designed to stop pirates and hostile naval forces, such as fortified breakwaters with archer towers or battlements, or even (usually in Crab ports) catapults and other siege weapons. Military vessels will patrol the coast and sea lanes to find and fight pirates. Shipbuilding ports are designed to allow for doing repairs even below the waterline. They may have drydocks, which differ from piers in that they are surrounded on three sides with rock and extend to the sea floor, with reinforced pitch-and-bamboo gates to seal in the ship. A large wheel built on one wall removes the water, lowering the ship onto blocks. Shipbuilding ports maintain large supplies of lumber, pitch, tar, sails, line and rope, plus specialized preformed ship parts in metal and wood. Their repair yards often maintain trained hull divers, who can hold their breath for long periods to scrape off barnacles or do other maintenance underwater. Often, unskilled heimin flock to these ports to learn a trade. Most ports, however, are trade ports, and even other types of ports usually support trade. Trade ports will employ vast numbers of dockworkers to move cargo, with strong guilds of craftsmen for any number of commodities. Tariff magistrates will maintain small agent houses in every berth to not delay inspections and assessments, and the local markets generally have slightly better prices than inland, due to not needing to pay for transport. The vast amounts of goods and cash makes these ports very tempting for bandits and pirates. Next time: Port Cities
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Jan 25, 2019 17:19
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Urban Jungle Cool Cats I mentioned in the first post, but I believe Urban Jungle is the first game where 'everyone's animal people' doesn't really add anything for Sanguine. In Ironclaw, it was a simple way to have lots of PC playable species and add color to a fantasy setting without resorting to Elf/Dwarf/Other. Myriad Song is great for having lots of weird and fun aliens to play as. Albedo was based on a comic where the people being animal-people in a highly artificial and constructed society was kind of the point. And Urban Jungle does have other comics and things it can point to where the anthro thing is part of a noir background. The problem is, Urban Jungle is very committed to being a very open game. It has some light fictionalization of the various cities, crime bosses, etc but from what I can tell, most of the setting is literally just 'we changed some names on normal American cities, also they have lots of cats and foxes and somehow there are snake people with no hands but no-one mentions this'. It isn't that it's bad, so much as, well, let's compare it to something like Lackadaisy. Lackadaisy is a comic about cat people running a speakeasy during Prohibition. Everyone in Lackadaisy is cat people. The artist has said 'this is because drawing cats' body language and expressions is really fun, as an artist', but if you changed them all to human characters, the story would be exactly the same. It's wholly a matter of art and aesthetics. Alternately, you could go all in on the idea of the various species as racial/ethnic stand-ins, but Urban Jungle doesn't really do this either, in the interest of being open. But you can't quite do the Lackadaisy thing because your species really matters, being a major building block of your character (which is probably why they didn't go with the ethnic stand-in option, because replacing 'I have Fox d8' with 'I have Sicilian d8' would be creepy). I admit I also just get a weird kind of uncanny valley feeling from 'the world is the world, except you're all gators and wolves' that I don't get from it being used in a purely fantasy setting. I should also note the art. Look, I'm sorry, guys, but you lured me in with a really great cover and then what's between the pages is just inconsistent. You get some good pieces, individually. But the majority of the art is a very cartoony style that doesn't really fit film noir. There's no sense of tone to the art; we go from an elegant advert for high end clothing to hastily drawn sunday funnies stuff about two hobo cats spouting meme dialogue, to lots of very generic 'funny animal' stuff. The cover art deserves special mention as the absolute best piece in the book, and if you're gonna put your best piece somewhere, that's a real good place to put it. I'm also willing to accept I'm just not necessarily the target audience for the art, but the visuals of the book are pretty disappointing. The decision to make everything black and white isn't followed by a sense of tone that makes it feel like a stylistic decision, and it just makes the book feel less colorful. Now, there's too many species to go over in detail, and they have a lot less fluff/presence for the setting than they did in Myriad Song, so I'm not going to be listing them all. But we know how Species work by now: You get a Species trait die, it goes with 3 skills, and then you get 2 Gifts. There are a LOT of species, and they each get one or two sentences of fluff and not much more. Also note that despite all the art showing snakes with no hands and no way to actually interact with the world, and their little blurb being 'We're not sure about the hands thing, either', they for all intents and purposes have hands and feet and whatever in play so you're playing a snakeman, not Kaa from the Jungle Book but in a bowler hat. One thing that stands out is how no species gets, say, Shooting or Academics. It's all Presence, Fighting, Endurance (which is actually much more useful in Urban Jungle), Athletics, Evasion, Observation, and in the case of apes, Craft. Yep, monkeys are amazing with a monkey-wrench. Ha ha. Similar, instead of natural weapons and stuff, for the most part any animal with claws and prominent teeth just gets Brawling as a Gift. Also, some species are all Giant (as a Gift) to reflect they're huge, like Bears. Now, your Species is actually noticeably more important overall, specifically because you don't have skill marks anymore. Being from a Species that gets Fighting means you can give someone a little chin music regardless of your Career or Type, after all. Same for Evasion; all foxes know how to be thieves and lookout men, regardless of what your day job might be. When you can't just put a couple points in that to pick it up, suddenly it's more important that 'everybody' from your part of town knows a little bit about that thing you do. Plus, if you wanted to be real good at something, you've got less ways to get extra dice, so picking a Species that's good at it is a good way to get more of 'em. It makes for an interesting choice: Do you pick a Species to broaden what you know, knowing the only way to pick up new skills is to pick up extra Careers later, or do you focus it on being really good at what you already want your character to do? The removal of Skill Marks makes these parts of your character more important than ever. Also note: Your Species doesn't give you Soaks, that comes wholly from your Type. And since this update is short as hell, let's talk Type. Now, your Type is what kind of Noir character you are. It's totally independent from your job and your species. There's nothing actually stopping you playing an innocent little Angel who is a hitman. You now get 2 d8 Traits, 4 d6 Traits, and 1 d4 Trait; you're still only 'bad' at one thing, making room for one more average Trait to make room for your Type. Type gives you 3 Skills, and either a Gift and a Soak, or two Soaks. Remember this is in addition to the Panic Soak-2 everyone has just for being a character. You also get an item for your Type, but these are more sentimental or signature items than anything else. For instance, the Boss is a Type that has buddies. You've got an Entourage (a Gift) of minor NPCs who depend on you, care about you, and who you feel responsible for. Also gonna say: Listing the page number of each Gift for quick reference right after the Gift in all these writeups is a real good organizational change that makes flipping through to make a PC faster and easier. That Gift lets you pick up followers and minor buddies who'll help out (within reason) in adventures. The Boss also gets a Distress Soak -4, which I mentioned earlier, but once per session they can just negate 4 damage and rally all their buddies while doing it because 'The Boss is in trouble!' is a big motivator. They're good at Negotiation, Presence, and Tactics, because they can coordinate with friends but they're also great at making them. And then they get a signature item they're never seen without, so that if their buddies find their scarf in the gutter or something, they know the bad guys have kidnapped The Boss and it's time to rescue you. The Types are a really neat addition to the game that helps you fill in something that fits in or stands out about your character. You want to be a two-fisted Hardboiled badass with a colt .45 and their trusty hip flask? That's there. You want to be a firebrand, inspiring Rebel who inspires everyone and always seems to have copies of their Manifesto? That's there. Sultry night club singer? Famous war hero from WWI (or II!)? They all have just enough flavor, and an important enough mechanical role to fill in, that they can add a lot to a character concept whether you're going for a contradiction or something that fits in perfectly. They're an extra building block for adding mechanical weight to your theming and character concept and I think they're a good addition for the specific genre the game's going for. Career is exactly as it's been in every single IC2e and onwards game. 3 skills, 2 gifts, and some stuff. Careers are very varied; you can be a hitman, a politician, a ganger, a mobster, an artist, a scientist, etc. Without Skill Marks, Type, Career, and Species matter a lot more for determining your skills mechanically. There's still a good mix and they fit in well with the Types and Species to give you a lot of mechanically viable options for building characters. They also basically give you 3 good concepting keywords to go off of. Still, Careers work exactly like they always have, so not much reason to go into huge detail here. I should also mention we've got the same skills, mostly used in the same way, as Myriad Song with the exception of Psyche. There's no Psyche skill because we ain't got no space wizards in these parts until the expansion book, which I assume is gonna have some space wizards from all the Cthulhu poo poo you'd expect out of a film noir Occult Horror add on. The biggest exception is that Endurance can now justify itself being an entire separate skill from Academics a lot better, since you roll your Endurance+Body to reduce damage from attacks before you go into your Soaks. With a more limited number of dice in general, you're also more likely to be called on to use more than one skill for a check. Trait Dice that grant both skills you're using get rolled twice, which can be a big deal. Like say Barry Bertolli, my Bear Mobster, is trying to impress on his captors they can't do poo poo to make him talk. He rolls Will+Presence+Endurance for this, trying to show disdain for their methods of gentle persuasion. He gets Presence and Endurance both from being a Bear, so he rolls his d8 Bear die twice. Mobster only give Presence but not Endurance, so he rolls his d6 Mobster once. That kind of thing. Like with MS, it's partly on you to suggest to the Host how your skills and abilities can apply, and where, and then up to them to decide if that works and call on you to roll the dice. Next Time: Gifts and Soaks
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Jan 25, 2019 18:46
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So what I'm getting here is that the Kolat are the good guys.
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Jan 25, 2019 19:05
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Bieeanshee posted:They were Wick's pet clan... Exactly
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Jan 25, 2019 19:18
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wiegieman posted:So what I'm getting here is that the Kolat are the good guys. It depends on what they intend to replace 'rule by divine right' with. But yeah i'm sympathetic to them at least.
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Jan 25, 2019 19:21
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wiegieman posted:So what I'm getting here is that the Kolat are the good guys. When written well, yes but they're also antagonists. From our current cultural perspective, it's obvious that the Kolat are right (if well written) and that rule by the gods is dumb and the samurai caste system is horrible. However, in the game you are playing as samurai descended from gods and so have a very vested interest (cultural, personal and political) in believing that rule by the gods is wise and the samurai caste system is the path to enlightenment. When handled well, the Kolat are a way to explore values dissonance between players and characters, and how those characters respond to being forced to realize injustice. Written badly, they're murderous psychopaths who want to replace one unjust system with another and are behind So Many Bad Things.
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Jan 25, 2019 19:26
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The current setup has the Kolat as flawed but sympathetic, to the extent that there is actually a full PC class for being a Kolat member in this book. Their goal is obviously sympathetic, but their methods are more than a little questionable. Which, I mean, the Great Clans are similarly mixed and complex. (Also rules for being from the Imperial vassal families, or a kitsune. The magical fox people, not the Fox Clan.) e: the Kolat ideal end goal in the current setup is also not stated; my guess is that different parts of the Kolat all have very different ideas about what it would eventually look like, but none expect to achieve it in a living lifetime without some really, really good luck.
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Jan 25, 2019 19:44
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Ethics in L5R are hard to adjudicate because this is a universe where the gods and the Cycle of Heaven objectively exist. The Kolat seem to go through a boom-and-bust cycle where they slowly accumulate power for centuries, then get found out and massacred. From their point of view, they've accomplished a great deal. The Emperor is no longer a descendant of heaven, and at one point mortals ascended to replace the Sun and Moon.
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Jan 25, 2019 19:54
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Halloween Jack posted:Ethics in L5R are hard to adjudicate because this is a universe where the gods and the Cycle of Heaven objectively exist. The Kolat seem to go through a boom-and-bust cycle where they slowly accumulate power for centuries, then get found out and massacred. From their point of view, they've accomplished a great deal. The Emperor is no longer a descendant of heaven, and at one point mortals ascended to replace the Sun and Moon. Timeline's rolled back. A Hantei is still on the throne, no mortals have ascended to godhood. On the other hand, Yoritomo is gearing up for a big push for legitimacy, and Yoritomo definitely doesn't have Kami blood.
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Jan 25, 2019 19:56
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Kaza42 posted:When written well, yes but they're also antagonists. From our current cultural perspective, it's obvious that the Kolat are right (if well written) and that rule by the gods is dumb and the samurai caste system is horrible. However, in the game you are playing as samurai descended from gods and so have a very vested interest (cultural, personal and political) in believing that rule by the gods is wise and the samurai caste system is the path to enlightenment. When handled well, the Kolat are a way to explore values dissonance between players and characters, and how those characters respond to being forced to realize injustice. Written badly, they're murderous psychopaths who want to replace one unjust system with another and are behind So Many Bad Things. They're also ultimately bad because the grace and favor of the gods is one of the things keeping the Shadowlands at bay. I'm sure Fu Leng is on the their list of tyrants to be dealt with but they're not destabilizing and weakening the Shadowlands.
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Jan 25, 2019 20:01
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Didn't the Kolat play a pivotal role in defeating the Lying Darkness, for which they were promptly rewarded with another purge? And they have a sect devoted to taking out blood mages and demons. Because finance is one of their main strengths, and they actually invented the Rokugani unit of currency, I tend to see the Kolat as an incipient bourgeois. Which is hampered by the fact that the divine right of kings literally exists in L5R. (I have no idea if any of this is still true in the new timeline.)
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Jan 25, 2019 20:20
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The new timeline is basically "What Clan coup", the Scorpion Champion is the loyal regent to child-emperor Daisetsu. So basically...none of that's happened.
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Jan 25, 2019 20:23
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Halloween Jack posted:Didn't the Kolat play a pivotal role in defeating the Lying Darkness, for which they were promptly rewarded with another purge? And they have a sect devoted to taking out blood mages and demons. At one point they swiped the original Tao of Shinsei so the Darkness couldn't unmake it, I believe. The Kolat in practice is mostly a secular organized crime racket.
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Jan 25, 2019 20:37
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