Gaijin Activities Design Flowsheet

[Orion]

Gaijin Activities

Step One: Name the PCs

In Gaijin Activities the players collectively from an Embassy who serve the interests of one or more powerful lords and attempt to curry favor and security for their faction.

Step Two: Write up a Six-Person Party

The Bushi is a noble in good standing. He can negotiate on behalf of his lord, make challenges, and so on. He also fights with a sword, and is expert in archery, iaijutsu, mounted combat and heavy armor, although none of those help with typical combat scenes.

The Ashigaru is a trusted retainer who is also a ninja. He is hindered by his low social rank, but can sneak around and do mind control, so it works out okay.

The Courtier is a noble-born administrator… who is also a ninja. He has excellent social skills, academic knowledge, and an array of hidden weapons and spells.

The Shugenja is a noble-born religious official. He can shoot fire, fly around, and summon spirits. However, it unseemly for him to fight or take part in politics.

The Monk is a former Bushi who has retired to a monastery. He is well-respected and cunning, with an array of rogueish skills. His kung-fu is deadly despite his unwillingness to use armor or weapons.

The Priest is a commoner who has a way with the spirits. He is an outsider to the court but respected for his wisdom. His powers include healing, divination, and banishment.

Step Three: Write up a three-person party.

Shugenja, Bushi, Courtier – This group should have no problems whatsoever with the negotiation aspect. They’ve got a magical expert and a stealth expert, as well as potentially huge buckets of firepower available.

Monk, Priest, Ashigaru -- this group doesn't have the direct social clout of the other group, but are also less subject to observation. They can fight and sneak though, and can actually get by in more social situations than the leadership can

Step Four: Write up an adventure

The party arrives at the court of a hostile clan daimyo. The next day a woman is murdered. The PCs are confined to their rooms under suspicion. Over the next few days they sneak or talk their way out to investigate the matter. At first it seems that they’re being framed by the local lord; the dead woman’s wife even challenges a PC to a duel. Eventually they discover the murder is the work of a dark magician who must be fought by the PCs in the chapel at midnight, preferably without attracting attention from the nightwatch.

Step Five:

Step Six:

Step Seven:

Level-based, TNE mechanics

[Orion]

The setting:

Basically, we're setting this in a Weeaboo fantasy empire. It expanded, stagnated, and is now slowly disintegrating.

This setting is GRIM and DARK, so everyone involved sucks. Some suck especially hard though.

The major antagonist groups are:

The Demonologists, who serve dark powers who ruled the land before the Empire

the Ninja Communists, who want to overthrow the rulership

and the Committe on Gaijin Activities, which seeks to purge the Empire of all dissent and foreign influence.

The PCs play aristocrats from one of the great clans, trying to hold some semblance of order together without being targetted by the Committee.

Each clan has a secret reason they don't actually belong

One clan is ethnically foreign

One clan practices a different religion

One clan is not entirely human

One clan is not actually of noble blood

HELP?

This is a Wuxia game, so every character is a martial artist, and effects that would,in D&D be spells, are here just exotic martial arts maneuvers.

[The Lunatic Fringe]

One clan is not actually of noble blood

Does their idea of what is "noble blood" go back to some historical/mythical event?

[Bigode]

Assuming you're not a spellcaster, how'd you not be better off in a fight with a bow than without? If the monk went through the entire bushi career and then learned other stuff, is anything keeping them equal to the bushi, other than unwillingness to use equipment that isn't even unfamiliar?

[Judging__Eagle]

I wonder what bizarre combat situations don't get less threatening for a non-spellcaster that has a bow than for one who doesn't.

And couldn't someone who went through the entire bushi career and then learned some be considered equal to the bushi only for some weird unwillingness to use normal equipment (that they even do know how to use)?

@_@ what?

"I wonder what bizarre combats sit don't get less threatening for a non-caster that has a bow, vs one that has a bow in a combat situation."

man, that was an awkward sentance.

I'm too tired to try the second one.

[Username17]

So you're doing a futuristic Cyberpunk L5R variant? Where the Empire has been replaced by a large Zaibatsu that controls a substantial portion of the world and has relatively firm borders with other dystopic megacorps that control other parts of the world and don't talk much. Where the matrix has shattered and now bleeds into the real world, causing onis and other shadowland horrors to take form? Where the leader of the corporation has been kept alive for generations by cloning him again and again and transferring his consciousness to his clone son every generation, only to have this stop this generation because all uses of the matrix and ancient super tech is tied to genetic keys and the process requires an activation key from a male heir to the now fallen Scorpion house?

Which is why the head of the corp is keeping the daughter of the old head of the Scorpon family as his "wife" in an effort to force her to bear a son to restart the line so that the immortality process can be restarted. Meanwhile, the Scorpion family was destroyed because the corp decided that they wanted to discontinue research into Shadow Radiation, that was nominally the branch's main focus. Which means that currently no one knows how the whole Shadow Matrix thing works.

Most people in the area live and work around high tech rice paddies around the spires. And the vast majority of them have an Ashigaru Switch in their DNA, that allows people with the proper equipment (and activating genetic codes) to control them like pieces on a go board. Some people of the low born caste have the "Ninja Suppressor Gene" that makes them immune to the control system. But for the most part, if you can capture the palace of one house or another and provide an ally with the appropriate genetic marker to control it, you can seamlessly take control of all the people in the surrounding rice paddies.

Since the matrix is shattered, all law s handled by consulting the people who have the genetic markers that allow them to pull up some portion of the law and history. And these people are called Magistrates. People who can access large portions of the data are called Oracles, and they are all hot chicks because that is hot. People who are able to access portions of the matrix that allow them to pop things out of the Ultraviolet-style virtual spaces are called Shugenja. Normally everyone has enforced loyalty not only to the corp, but also to a strict feudal hierarchy that goes up through family to clan to the corp as a whole. Those who don't are called Ronin.

The original corporations are the one that things focus on, as well as Patala, Hevezda, and Universal Standard. They are known only by the occasional travelers who show up in Imperial areas as Ronin. Patala is all South Asian, its facilities are under the water, they have genetically gorked themselves into weird snake people and carry around pearl-shaped optical storage systems. Hevezda is all Eastern European/Russian and they have some sort of thing about the interchangeability of man, which is why they invest in Soviet-style battle suits and pokemon rather than personal modifications. Universal Standard is all American, and they do space and super chemistry or something. Whatever, because they are physically the farthest away.

Anyway, the corp of primary concern has seven family branches in called Clans. These clans are like little zaibatsu themselves and constantly jockey for position, but they also have themes:

• The Lion: Catgirl Necromancers The Lion Clan specialize in genetics, which is why they turn themselves into cat girls (or rather Lion Girls, such as you care). They also can revive data from the past by asking the dead - a process that involves using Jurasic Park bullshit to get genetic structures out of corpses so that they can unlock data files.
• The Crane: Superstars Largely in charge of entertainment, the Crane have at their disposal vast array of Rock. And things that Rock. They make movies and the news, so they are largely in charge of determining what open discourse "is."
• The Dragon: Firebreathing Cyborgs The Dragon do cybernetics and medicine. They modify themselves with chunky cyborg bits, becoming more machine than man, while living super crazy long in their mountainous hospital towers.
• The Phoenix: Reality Hackers The Phoenix do software engineering, which often puts them in rivalry with the Crane (since the edge of what's software and what's entertainment is blurred) and the Lion (because all data is genetically accessed). The very top of the Phoenix are a group of AIs that periodically possess people in the clan, and only Shugenja have any status.
• The Unicorn: Foreign Money The Unicorn were a clan dedicated to extracting resources from the barbarian lands in between the major corporate holdings. However, after the Shadow Crash, the external mines and plantations have largely been destroyed. However, due to the fact that the Unicorn had managed to over-insure all their shit, they are now sitting on by far the biggest pile of cash in the corporation - which they now use as a beat stick to effect their will upon the world through lightning fast buyouts and investor pullouts.
• The Crab: Heavy Industry, Dirty Hands The Crab are tasked with the unglamorous jobs of heavy industry, structural maintenance, and security. They have adopted a morally flexible "Git R Done" attitude, and hire uplifted (tengu and nezumi), and tainted (bakemono and even oni). These non-humans are even allowed to attain rank in the Crab branches, a fact which lowers the perceived honor of the houses even more.
• The Scorpion: Lost Shadow Tech The Scorpion are a demoted clan. Their leaders were fired so hard that no one can even find the bodies. What they did was do shadow radiation experiments and gather information. After the Shadow Crash (which may or may not have been their fault), the corporation head turned on them and had the clan destroyed. Unfortunately for the empire, the Scorpion managed to take all their highest genetic codes to the grave or into hiding, so the effects of the Shadow Crash are now even worse. Further attempts to destroy the source of Shadow Radiation with nuclear bombs have just corrupted reality even more.

So the team is traditionally going to be composed of Ronin who are taking jobs for house lords jockeying for position. A team might have a Hevezda Hawk Rider and a Crab Nezumi Heavy Machine Operator, but most of the team is going to be humans who are nominally from different clans.

-Username17

[Orion]

Re: Archery

1: the bow is not necessarily all that useful in a typical skirmish -- this being a wushu game, mobility is going to good enough that staying at range is not a particularly viable tactic.

2: The role of the bow, therefore, is military hardware. The bow is going to have realistic range, maybe even better than realistic, so you'll be able to snipe people from across a field. But it's a special-purpose tool. Even the Bushi isn't going to carry a bow most of the time, because unlike a katana that's not socially acceptable.

3: The staple monk might just not have Archery skill/proficiency/whatever to represent his being out of practice. But we can easily put more stringent requirements on him. It's not socially acceptable for the typical monk to use a bow so he'd have to be secretive about it. If we really want to be harsh, make carrying weapons of war interfere with the harmonic balance needed for his kung-fu moves.

[Bigode]

Even the Bushi isn't going to carry a bow most of the time, because unlike a katana that's not socially acceptable.

Color me surprised - was that true of Japan as well? As for monks, it wasn't specifically with regards to their archery, but you did make your point.

[Username17]

Arrows? Fuck that, yo. The cool weapons are lasers, katana, and shuriken. That is why it is so important that everyone have the forcefields from Dune.

Shuriken are poison filled and designed to shatter on shields, while katana are imprinted thousands of times with different genetic markers so that the blades get recognized as "self" be everyone's personal shields while they are being wielded by someone with the proper genetic signature to use them in the first place.

-Username17

[Orion]

I have no idea whether carrying a bow would have been acceptable in Japan, but logically speaking I doubt it would be. A Daikyu is big and awkward enough that one can't carry one without interfering significantly in daily activities - this, in turn, says "I care deeply about being ready for maximum violence at a moment' notice" which tends to make people uncomfortable. I imagine therefore the bow would be kept with one's horse and armor, to be broken out in the event of battlefield action.

[Orion]

Umm... cyberpunk Rokugan is cool and all, and definitely an idea that's crossed my mind more than a few times, but where did you get "futuristic" from the OP? Or, alternately, why do you feel this works better as a futuristic game?

My original plan was to actually retroject shadowrun's modernit yonto feudal trappings. So battle armor, horses, and bows, become like tanks and rocket launchers --not part of the normal combat balance, but big guns that represent escalation beyond the scale of the normal skirmish rules.

[Username17]

Umm... cyberpunk Rokugan is cool and all, and definitely an idea that's crossed my mind more than a few times, but where did you get "futuristic" from the OP?

This setting is GRIM and DARK

This is a set phrase, which means "Retro Sci Fi with fallen technology levels and crushing feudalism." So yeah, you said the setting was futuristic Rokugan in the second post.

The whole monks thing can be handled as a socially acceptable way to get executives out of the way without murdering them. That is, people can retire to "pursue enlightenment" where they try to patch together the matrices of Earth, Wind, Fire, Water, and Void to recreate the perfect matrix. A task that is super important, but seemingly endless.

-Username17

[Orion]

Umm... cyberpunk Rokugan is cool and all, and definitely an idea that's crossed my mind more than a few times, but where did you get "futuristic" from the OP?

This setting is GRIM and DARK

This is a set phrase, which means "Retro Sci Fi with fallen technology levels and crushing feudalism." So yeah, you said the setting was futuristic Rokugan in the second post.

Fallen technology levels -- check

Crushing Feudalism -- check

Retro Sci Fi -- not sure exactly what you mean here...

Point one: This setting does have some modernity going on, obviously, because you can't have grimdark otherwise. But what i want to do is more reusing the samurai fantasy set dressing in a modern context. Warhorses stand in for tanks, and so on.

Point two: How futuristic does sci-fi have to be? I mean honestly, a lot of classic sci-fi postulates mostly stuff we already have in the 21st century. Wouldn't earth-modern tech as the "high point" be acceptable? That's different enough from Samurai Japan to give the requisite weird anacrhonisms, right?

Point three: I'm not opposed to futuristic elements, but I have a couple of issues with your suggestions. First, stuff like genetech and reality hacking... kind of detracts from the martial arts/wuxia angle, no? Second, it makes for an absurdly complicated setting that makes it harder for players to get their bearings. The biggest problem that arises thereby is the role of the PCs in the setting. Shadowrun assumes PCs start low enough on the totem pole that it's acceptable for the higher end of the setting to be an incomprehensible fountain of crazy. Shadowrun politics can and should be beyond the players' comprehension.

Not so in Gaijin Activities. The players are meant to be aristocrats who make political decisions, which doesn't work unless the players are capable of understanding the issues.

[CatharzGodfoot]

Umm... cyberpunk Rokugan is cool and all, and definitely an idea that's crossed my mind more than a few times, but where did you get "futuristic" from the OP?

This setting is GRIM and DARK

This is a set phrase, which means "Retro Sci Fi with fallen technology levels and crushing feudalism." So yeah, you said the setting was futuristic Rokugan in the second post.

Fallen technology levels -- check

Crushing Feudalism -- check

Retro Sci Fi -- not sure exactly what you mean here...

Point one: This setting does have some modernity going on, obviously, because you can't have grimdark otherwise. But what i want to do is more reusing the samurai fantasy set dressing in a modern context. Warhorses stand in for tanks, and so on.

Point two: How futuristic does sci-fi have to be? I mean honestly, a lot of classic sci-fi postulates mostly stuff we already have in the 21st century. Wouldn't earth-modern tech as the "high point" be acceptable? That's different enough from Samurai Japan to give the requisite weird anacrhonisms, right?

Point three: I'm not opposed to futuristic elements, but I have a couple of issues with your suggestions. First, stuff like genetech and reality hacking... kind of detracts from the martial arts/wuxia angle, no? Second, it makes for an absurdly complicated setting that makes it harder for players to get their bearings. The biggest problem that arises thereby is the role of the PCs in the setting. Shadowrun assumes PCs start low enough on the totem pole that it's acceptable for the higher end of the setting to be an incomprehensible fountain of crazy. Shadowrun politics can and should be beyond the players' comprehension.

Not so in Gaijin Activities. The players are meant to be aristocrats who make political decisions, which doesn't work unless the players are capable of understanding the issues.

The problem is, Frank can whip out an amazing setting like that that you'll just want to play. It's Shadowrun like Shadowrun should be. No matter that it's not at all what you imagined -- remember Dead Man's Hand?

*Sigh*

[Username17]

One of the first questions any game system has to answer is how the physics "work." If you lift a heavy weight, what happens to the floor? What happens when you let go? That sort of thing. When you have people capable of doing "magic shit" that becomes even more important. If you spray fire onto a hay stack, is the barn in danger? If a guy is flying around what can people on the ground hope to accomplish against him?

The things that people do with shugendo are magical in special effect, but to get into character, to make plans, the players have to have an underlying understanding of how those powers work. Also why they work, and perhaps most importantly of all: what happens to the world when they work and don't work.

The concept is that the corporation used to have two separate things going: the Data Rings and the Holding Pattern. The Data Rings were kind of like the internet, except without net neutrality and having access to tremendously unthinkable amounts of bandwidth. Different genetic codes opened up archives and transfer protocols in The Rings, allowing people access to information and communications according to their rank in the company. The Holding Pattern meanwhile, was a system of extradimensional transport/storage. Things could be loaded into the Holding Pattern in a manner similar to putting things into the transport buffer or the phantom zone. Since any of the Holding Pattern gates could be refocused to act as any of the other ones, you could move stuff from gate to gate and things would still be fresh. Alternatively, you could store things in the Holding Pattern indefinitely and pull them out when you needed them.

Then the Shadow Crash happened. This shattered the Data Rings into five many pieces each made of various data shards. It also broke all the Holding Pattern gates, leaving everything in the holding pattern stranded. But it also made the walls between the "real" world, the Data Rings, and the Holding Pattern virtually nonexistent. People can now interact with those things from anywhere, and sometimes do whether they like it or not.

The first thing this does is create the Oni. These are Shadow Constructs that are actually ideas from the Data Rings that are imposed onto things in the physical world by a Shadow Bridge. Once the Oni concept in the Rings gets the designation of a person or object in the physical world it bleeds in and then that item turns into a Youma. Think Makai Kingdoms or Sailor Moon.

But the next thing it did is create Shugendo. This is the act of using your own genetic keys to manipulate reality around you. What can Shugendo do? Well, what it does is either send things from the world to the Rings or the Pattern, or it sends things from the Rings or the Pattern to the world. And really, that's about it. But that's a lot.

• Illusion - One of the biggest Shugendo tricks is literally a trick - you can display things from the Rings onto the physical world. This creates illusions. Some people can take images of things in the physical world, store them in the Rings, and then play them back over the world later - creating customized illusions.
• Destructive Blasts - Shifting something into the Pattern is practically a death sentence. Shifting something partially into the Pattern is a death sentence. Shugendo can attempt to hurl things into the Pattern, causing devastation.
• Oni Summoning - You can give the name of something to one of the oni in the Rings and it can come out into the world.
• Conjuring - Anything that you find in the Pattern can be called out of it. Also anything you put into the Pattern can be called out of it. You can store heavy objects and drop them on people, you can store dangerous and useful items for later (ab)use.
• Comunication - While definitely damaged and unreliable, the Rings still are a communication network. Any two people with access to the same shard (which would include father and son, for example) can send communications back and forth.
• Divination - the old Data Rings had basically all data, and for some reason they haven't stopped accumulating data since the Shadow Crash. So you can grab stuff from the ether to see or learn things.
• Air Walking - The surfaces between the Rings and the World can be called up pretty much anywhere, creating artificial surfaces even in the middle of the air. You can use them to stand on or hide behind.
• Transportation - You can send things into the Rings or the Pattern and bring them out again elsewhere. You can move into the Rings and back out into contiguous areas.

That's what the "magic" does. If someone has an idea for a power, and they can fit it into that physics set, it belongs. If they can't, then it doesn't.

The big questions then are what you can do with the other sorcery in the setting. For those keeping track at home, that would be:

• Lion Necromancy This stuff mostly mimics Shugendo. Except that you have to do alchemical processes in a bio lab and then you open up things in other Rings and Patterns using the genetic keys in other peoples' bodies.
• Crane Brainwashing Memetic warfare at its finest. The Crane have access to power ballads on wailing guitars that directly trigger responses in people. Short out Ashigaru Genes for a while, confuse people, hypnotize people. All while rocking out.
• Phoenix Compiling The Phoenix create Ring Constructs. This means that they make things which are essentially Oni, that they can then summon by ascribing them the names of things in the World.
• Dragon Medicine It doesn't just make you live longer, it transforms you into a tattooed terminator. It may be balanced back by the prospect of losing access to genetic keys if you take it too far.
• Crab Heavy Machinery You get to control giant construction bots. So you get to be Patlabor. The awesome shouldn't have to be explained.
• Unicorn Finance The old system was privilege based, and the new one is too. Unicorns can use their large and entirely theoretical credit rating in the Rings to buy people out of their share in their Rings. Meaning that they can try to counter or even steal other peoples' Ring and Pattern holdings.
• Shadow Radiation Tech What does this shit do? It takes things in the World, the Rings, and the Pattern and blends their traits. So it can make a Ring illusion solid, or it can turn a man into an email. It has some sort of limitation based on name exchange and file conservation.
• Hevezda Pokemastery The Hevezda corp doesn't give anyone any genetic keys, instead everyone trains in mental discipline to interact with their machines and bioconstructs. So a properly trained Hevezda employee might be able to control a giant hawk or a charizard.
• Hevezda Giant Robot Suits Alternately, a Hevezdan might be trained as a gundam pilot.
• Patalan Pearl Tech - The big deal with Patalan Pearl technology is that the stuff isn't interrupted by Shadow Radiation, so you can still log in to their equivalent of the internet.

And yeah, if you're a Crab Kappa you're some kind of crazy turtle man, if you're a Patalan Naga you are a giant snake dude, and if you're a Lionette you're a Cat Girl. These adjust you physically, but they don't really open up tremendously big cans of special technique worms.

-Username17

[angelfromanotherpin]

The whole monks thing can be handled as a socially acceptable way to get executives out of the way without murdering them. That is, people can retire to "pursue enlightenment" where they try to patch together the matrices of Earth, Wind, Fire, Water, and Void to recreate the perfect matrix. A task that is super important, but seemingly endless.

Not sure if you knew this, but this system is already in place in Japanese corporate society. Instead of retiring, highly successful aging executives achieve 'the descent to Heaven,' and are given a job with no real responsibilities or power, but perks and salary. Then they mostly attempt to recreate the perfect golf game.

[Orion]

Okay, Frank has sold me on his setting. It would be an awesome game, one I'd be happy to play and even work on. However, unless he's planning on adding one more project to his plate, it's not going anywhere. I don't understand what he's going for well enough to write for it just now, let alone take it over.

Also, it doesn't seem very martial-arts focused.

I mean, part of my resistance here is that this started out as a mechanical proof-of-concept exercise, and the flavor came later, so in that sense I'm kind of working backwards. But the game he's talking about doesn't sound level-based, and I'm already working on a skill-based game, bad Juju.

[Crissa]

Ahh! An arrow is imprinted with the payload to deactivate the personal shield or moving slow enough it doesn't scare up the rigidity defense of reactive armor that would from bullets and explosions...

-Crissa

[Username17]

Also, it doesn't seem very martial-arts focused.

Martal Arts are brought in because of the Dune Shields that important people get. I mean, you got Fremen Kempo, Weirding Way, and Ginaz Sword Technique. By giving people personal shields for being bad asses, you can have these sword fighting techniques be really important and weird.

Otherwise, people are just going to sit back and watch the shugenja throw fireballs. Once that becomes impractical as a way to get rid of effective opponents, people are going to be willing to sword duel.

I mean, part of my resistance here is that this started out as a mechanical proof-of-concept exercise, and the flavor came later, so in that sense I'm kind of working backwards.

There are other skill systems. I mean, the L5R game is based on a Roll And Keep scenario. That's totally workable even if the specific AEG mechanics are admittedly quite dumb. Give people a variable pile of dice, have them roll it, select the best dice out of that pile, add them together, and have that total compared to the TN to achieve degrees of success.

• Advantages: because you scale the number of dice you drop in addition to scaling the number of dice you keep, you can get to higher power levels without having things diverge in power a whole lot. Also, being super strong adds to the number of dice you keep, which increases the variance and the average, while being super skilled adds to the number of dice you roll and don't keep - which increases the average and decreases the variance.
• Disadvantages: Rolling 2 dice and keeping one averages 4.47. That's time consuming number crunching. Not impossible by any means, but substantially more difficult to calculate than a pile of dice against a fixed target number. You certainly run the risk of going "ah, fuck it" and churning out a total system that stays on the RNG very poorly like AEG did.

But in general, there's a reason that the flow sheet suggests figuring out what people are supposed to do and then doing the math to make sure they can do it within the system. System first, fill in game usually fails. For one thing, the "filled in" setting is usually breakable as a setting without dice even meaningfully hitting the table. Like how in 4e you can just get on a hippogryph, strap on a bow, and kill anything. The whole game is predicated on the idea that you'll be sitting around with a mix of archers and swordsmen, and it stops working if you just... don't do that.

-Username17

[Bigode]

[*] Air Walking - The surfaces between the Rings and the World can be called up pretty much anywhere, creating artificial surfaces even in the middle of the air. You can use them to stand on or hide behind.

More appropriately called "forcefields"?

[clan sorceries in general]

Looks like some of those are pre-Shadow Crash. Doesn't that mean a massive disparity back then, that could, say, lead to some clans not existing?

[*] Dragon Medicine It doesn't just make you live longer, it transforms you into a tattooed terminator. It may be balanced back by the prospect of losing access to genetic keys if you take it too far.

Essence mechanics without the suck, or something else?

[*] Unicorn Finance The old system was privilege based, and the new one is too. Unicorns can use their large and entirely theoretical credit rating in the Rings to buy people out of their share in their Rings. Meaning that they can try to counter or even steal other peoples' Ring and Pattern holdings.

Any idea on how to make that remotely playable?

[*] Shadow Radiation Tech What does this shit do? It takes things in the World, the Rings, and the Pattern and blends their traits. So it can make a Ring illusion solid, or it can turn a man into an email. It has some sort of limitation based on name exchange and file conservation.

What I don't get's how shugendo couldn't do it using effects mixed from the categories above.

[*] Hevezda Giant Robot Suits Alternately, a Hevezdan might be trained as a gundam pilot.

Aside from the fact that their stuff won't be mutually compatible, any meaningful difference from the crabs? Also: where does the Hevezda name come from?

[*] Patalan Pearl Tech - The big deal with Patalan Pearl technology is that the stuff isn't interrupted by Shadow Radiation, so you can still log in to their equivalent of the internet.

Is it meant to exist in any way outside Patalan territory? If yes, how?

Martal Arts are brought in because of the Dune Shields that important people get. I mean, you got Fremen Kempo, Weirding Way, and Ginaz Sword Technique. By giving people personal shields for being bad asses, you can have these sword fighting techniques be really important and weird.

Otherwise, people are just going to sit back and watch the shugenja throw fireballs. Once that becomes impractical as a way to get rid of effective opponents, people are going to be willing to sword duel.

Problem: if the PCs get immune to bullets, why most infiltration (at least as Shadowrun understands it)?

[Username17]

More appropriately called "forcefields"?

Sure. The forcefields are made out of interrupting the World with the Pattern. They pretty much make bullets obsolete and you can "fly" by making stuff in the air to walk on.

Looks like some of those are pre-Shadow Crash. Doesn't that mean a massive disparity back then, that could, say, lead to some clans not existing?

Pre-Shadowcrash, there was some sort of highly advanced monetary system that ruled everyone through the Rings. You couldn't conquer anyone else's houses, because the system would penalize you by taking away your rights to the houses that you already had. Also, may techniques are probably more advanced than they were in earlier times. And of course, there were techniques that were lost in the Crash. So the pre-crash dynamics were incredibly different.

Still, if it's an interesting plot point, you can totally have other clans besides the Scorpion who were dropped for crimes or failure or just plain dying out.

Any idea on how to make that remotely playable?

Sure. I mean, there have been counterspell mechanics in a variety of games that have ranged in effectiveness from "overpowered" to "shit." The goal I think would be to treat it something like Champions Power Drain- you use the fact that the Rings awarded the Unicorn clan some huge cash settlement right before things went down to be able to make injunctions on other peoples' access privileges. This makes it difficult for them to use shugendo for a while.

The part where it works like Power Transfer, where you forcibly rent someone else's shugendo is potentially broken. But of course, it's potentially useless too. Mostly depends upon its cost and benefits.

What I don't get's how shugendo couldn't do it using effects mixed from the categories above.

Shugendo exists because Shadow Radiation got all over everything. Shadow Radiation tech (and just plain Shadowspawn powers) basically revolve around pushing shugendo into the World and shattering the Rings even more. So yeah, the techniques people did with Shadow should be very much "in genre" to anything a shugenja can do. Like how Clerics and Wizards don't really look that different when their spells go off - although hopefully much tighter in focus than that.

Aside from the fact that their stuff won't be mutually compatible, any meaningful difference from the crabs?

There is literally no end to how much you can giant robots to do. One is more Patlabor, the other more GW - the giant robots have a very different "feel."

Also: where does the Hevezda name come from?

It's an Anglicization of Slavic word for "Star." In Russian, it's звезда, and in Czech it's Hvězda. So they are the Slavic corporation, and they have a classless society whose symbol is a big red star. I hope I don't have to draw you a diagram.

Is it meant to exist in any way outside Patalan territory? If yes, how?

Absolutely. That's why they carry those weird optical pearls. So that they can keep access to their data links. Also they have a combat style based on trying to constrict you so that the shields prevent you from expanding your chest.

Problem: if the PCs get immune to bullets, why most infiltration (at least as Shadowrun understands it)?

Several reasons: first of all, it's not just a free for all brawl. Nominally everyone works for the corp. You can't just storm things, because no house has the power to stand against a full clan, let alone the corp as a whole.

Also, anyone who is sufficiently pissed at you and knows where you are can have you poisoned. Poisoning is a huge problem.

But also, since you're also stuck doing hand to hand combat, there's a profound limit to how many people you can defeat. While there's a big dueling culture, the fact is that most bad asses have some problems when facing down large numbers of ashigaru with spears. If nothing else, they won't be able to move forward.

-Username17

[Bigode]

Shugendo exists because Shadow Radiation got all over everything. Shadow Radiation tech (and just plain Shadowspawn powers) basically revolve around pushing shugendo into the World and shattering the Rings even more. So yeah, the techniques people did with Shadow should be very much "in genre" to anything a shugenja can do. Like how Clerics and Wizards don't really look that different when their spells go off - although hopefully much tighter in focus than that.

You made it sound like defilers and preservers now. If your effect used too many categories at once, it'd be something a shugenja doesn't know how/have permission to do?

It's an Anglicization of Slavic word for "Star." In Russian, it's звезда, and in Czech it's Hvězda. So they are the Slavic corporation, and they have a classless society whose symbol is a big red star. I hope I don't have to draw you a diagram.

Sorry - I think it's needed.

[Username17]

Basically, Lion Necromancy, Phoenix Compiling, Unicorn Finance, and Shadow Radiation Technology all can be considered metamagic that affects the normal operation of shugendo. Lion Necromancy and Unicorn Finance directly adjust the privileges of the individual, adjusting what information and effects they can gain from the Rings or the Pattern. Phoenix Compiling and Shadowtech work at it from the opposite direction: adjusting what's in the matrices n the first place.

I envision Shadowtech as being a lot like Warhammer's Skaven Warpstone Tech. Sometimes it gives you extra mouths and tentacles and shit, but otherwise it's just a spell and equipment list.

Sorry - I think it's needed.

OK. Hevezda doesn't do the whole retro-future rice paddies feudal thing. Indeed, there are no "lords" nor are there families of high power. You are personally expected to "draw a line" between you and your family. Each person is drilled continuously in developing the mental discipline required to interface with Hevezdan electronic or biological constructs. Those who perform well gain personal status and get assigned better and more important things to interface with. Those who never become good at the interface end up getting put on meaningless drudge duty or even up-melded into important but damaging devices that chew through operators - like the Mamon Machine in Metropolis.

Their corporate and Imperial Symbol looks like this:

And they are composed of slavs and Central Asians. Where the primary corp is based on Imperial Nippon and China, Hevezda is modeled on the Soviet Union and the Mongolian Empire.

All this being said, if this were to actually go forward, explicit L5R ties should probably be cut. My days of writing L5R plot fiction are long behind me, and I frankly don't want to deal with them. So the clans should probably be blenderized. Or even regressed into more historical forms.

Actual Samurai Clans in Nippon were all represented by flowers, which frankly is pretty gay. And I mean that in the strictly Spartan sense where they kept young boys around to have sex with in exchange for training in martial discipline. Not really the message we want to send. Chinese heraldry is more awesome, and probably a better place to start. The Tiger is Formosa, the Lion is Tibet, The North gets a Black Tortoise (that is taboo) and a Black Snake (that is not). The elements also have their own animals: the Boar, the Dog, the Bull, the Ram, and the Cock. The Emperor is represented by a Yellow Dragon. That's not bad as a list, actually.

I'd be perfectly happy to work for the Ox Clan or the Boar Clan.

-Username17

[Judging__Eagle]

Thanks Bigode, now I understand what you meant. I think it was a combination of talking about edge-cases where imbalance shows up and a combination of truncating part of what you were writing that confused me.

Frank.... that's awesome, you took two things that I know in varying amounts and made something that I can wrap my head around pretty quickly. Which leads to my next question.

What's the setting for TNE? Will it be something with 5 different clans/tribe/nations/guilds/religions/concerns/corporations/kingdoms/nations (one for each Class aka each Colour), or more than 5 or less than 5?

[Bigode]

Sorry - I think it's needed.

OK.

Eh, it was an attempt to get you to draw an actual diagram, preferentially with LOLcats in it (or pictures in you in dystopian Czech architecture) - my previous question was mostly that your names tend to come from mythological stuff (and I knew none by that name), and my Slavic vocabulary's close to null for the time being, so no diagram needed. But the result, as always, is good.

All this being said, if this were to actually go forward, explicit L5R ties should probably be cut. My days of writing L5R plot fiction are long behind me, and I frankly don't want to deal with them. So the clans should probably be blenderized. Or even regressed into more historical forms.

Switching the names and decoration would work, or it's still too close for ya?

Actual Samurai Clans in Nippon were all represented by flowers, which frankly is pretty gay. And I mean that in the strictly Spartan sense where they kept young boys around to have sex with in exchange for training in martial discipline. Not really the message we want to send.

Sure (though weirdly I've little if any objection to the flowers in themselves). But remember: it's "rooster" - we already have enough problems with crossbows.

I'd be perfectly happy to work for the Ox Clan or the Boar Clan.

Talking about how those are in Rokugan, then, since you included the Ox? BTW, is it just an impression or your plans for the Hevezda are more sympathetic than for the Zaibatsu in general (not that I've a problem with it)?

What's the setting for TNE? Will it be something with 5 different clans/tribe/nations/guilds/religions/concerns/corporations/kingdoms/nations (one for each Class aka each Colour), or more than 5 or less than 5?

Originally it was 10 main races, 2/color. Then I discussed raising to 15. Later on, Frank wanted to resurrect his Culture Focus material (8 threads named thusly on "It's My Own Invention", for those who don't know), which had ... 8 people based on a 7-element system. So there ya go ...