Cornuthaum
Be kind to each other.
- Location
- Austria
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I feel compelled to ask if the Elemental Legions or, indeed, the forces of the Great Clans have their own variant of Exterminatus Extremis....?
Empire of the Emerald Stars (Legend of the Five Rings)
- Thread starter Maugan Ra
- Start date
- Sci-Fi
EtchedSteel
*mumble mumble*
- Location
- Lima. Peru
My guess is that it involves bombarding a target with all the Jade bombs, given that the existance of entire planets with all kind of corrupted lifeforms from Jigoku is known in this setting.
Uh...did you even read my post? Barring scoring some kind of perfect basis to do the project immediately, you WOULD be doing lots of pure theory research to uprank the ideas to the point where you can roll out an applied project.
Crasian01
Insane Incubator
I'm not sure I understand what you've written then. What is "Inspiration" specifically intended to mean? It sounds to me like you're treating "Inspiration" as both a resource and an item on the "tech tree", but I guess that's not what you're going for?
- Location
- Germany
I wonder about this system. If I wanted to improve a province from rating 1 to 2, I would have to roll Xk1, add Glory, and reach a target number of 20, right? So for success to even be possible, one would have to assign a character with Glory 10. The highest Glory we have seen so far is 5, though. Am I missing something?
[X] The Lion Clan. The Emperor desires something traditional this year, where he might hold court as did his ancestors of old, and a visit to New Rokugan seems just the thing.
Sirrocco
Pedantic
Might be XkX. Also, 10s explode.
If we were going all simulationist, I'd agree with you, but that's not necessarily where we want to go. This is Space!Rokugan. It is by its very nature causing all sense of realism to complain bitterly. Instead, we want Science to be important as a thing, interesting as a widget to play with, appropriate to the narrative at hand and the world we are playing in, and relatively little hassle for our QM to handle.
- Location
- London, England
Yeah, a system which keeps things easy for me would be grand.
Anyway, I'm still messing with the numbers for different improvement methods. And, for that matter, thinking about how to factor in sending multiple characters to work on something. Possibly extra kept dice with a limitation on how many you can send at once...
Anyway, I'm still messing with the numbers for different improvement methods. And, for that matter, thinking about how to factor in sending multiple characters to work on something. Possibly extra kept dice with a limitation on how many you can send at once...
Night
Widow Null
- Location
- Hoff
They have large spaceships. Accelerate rock. Though it's probably not a property of their FTL system if we're operating by the logic in Imperial Histories 2, which seems to involve magical tunneling.
That said it seems unlikely it's something they'd do. This is an Emerald Empire who lived for thousands of years with the Shadowlands, and eventually wore them down, staged an offensive, and closed the Festering Pit then reclaimed the Shadowlands. Their specialists in dealing with the forces of literal evil were culturally defined for a very long time by a war at stalemate. They're more than willing to play a long game, and have the means to reclaim territory that's been tainted in a way that doesn't seem to exist in 40k.
Cornuthaum
Be kind to each other.
- Location
- Austria
- Pronouns
- He/Him
"Hurl rock at hell" is not particularly useful.
Night
Widow Null
- Location
- Hoff
The Crab love to throw rocks at hell. The Kaiu are the best seige engineers in the Empire, the only ones with a working understanding of real siege engines, because they throw rocks at hell. Rokugani are used to dealing with hell as a physical location populated by physical entities; the Shadowlands are hell and the Shadowlands can be interacted with physically. So too can any world that is Tainted with a capital or tainted with a lowercase. Throwing rocks at hell is a solution with a long and successful history in Rokugan.
Jigoku (and Toshigoku) itself is something way beyond hell, but fortunately the way spirit realms interact means that's not a terribly dangerous concern. "Hell on earth" overlapping physical locations like 40k does with Warp/Realspace interface is not something that happens in L5R. There are clearly defined portals, through which creatures and influence pass, but not physical overlap.
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Cornuthaum
Be kind to each other.
- Location
- Austria
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Cracking a Jigoku-tainted planet basically leaves space full of kryptonite, except it's Taint and everyone is Superman. "Drop rock on hell" usually doesn't work, "drop rock on Hell's minions as they assault your entrenched positions" does. Hitting a Jigoku-tainted planet with KKVs is not comparable to the old fight at the Wall.
Sirrocco
Pedantic
By my understanding, Jikogu-tainted planets are just planets overrun by oni with one or more portals (often large) to Jikogu. The description of modern firearms indicates that it is now possible to generate jade bullets repeatedly by applying small amounts of mechanical force to a properly designed system. Jade is no longer a limitation. Thus, the Crab would respond to such things by hurling enormous green rocks at hell via good old-fashioned orbital bombardment cannon until they stop turning all black and sludgy on impact and then descending with appropriate numbers of shugenja to find and seal said portals. Now, the Oni are probably bigger and scarier too, and there are likely ship-scale oni in orbit around the place, and you have to be *very careful* with your warpgates to make sure that the Oni don't follow you through them to infect the clean lands, but "throw rocks at hell" would still be very much a part of the process.
Acknowledgement: the above is speculation. If someone has actual evidence that I am wrong about my understanding/inference of one or more aspects of the setting, by all means let me know.
Suggestion to @Maugan Ra: have there be some way in which the conjured Jade used in Crab Clan Bullets (and the conjured steel used by everyone else) is not the same as the stuff you pull out of the ground. Things like "loses cohesion and dissolves into nothing after a while" and/or "doesn't work for making magitech or other enchanted items" would work well. It lets the Crab Clan as a whole still care about sources of natural jade, rather than just magicking it up on an as-needed basis, while still using the conjured stuff for things like Jade Fingers, bullets, and so forth.
- Location
- London, England
Jade (or indeed anything else) summoned by prayers to the kami tends to dissolve and vanish before too long, much like how the Jade Strike spell doesn't produce vast quantities of the precious material in canon L5R.
Plus, the Crab Clan's Jade-firing guns require actual Jade to be worked into their construction, so supply is pretty much always an issue.
Cornuthaum
Be kind to each other.
- Location
- Austria
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Some things never change.
- Location
- his hidden lair
To be fair, we're literally sitting on mountains of jade. Production isn't the issue, it's convincing the other clans that using the material manifestation of purity to smite the forces of hell is more important than having pretty ornaments and decorations made out of the stuff.
And I imagine trying to artificially produce the physical manifestation of purity, spice, and everything nice is not going to go all that well. Frankly it sounds like a classic Isawa experiment gone wrong just waiting to happen.
'Why in the Kami's names would you open a portal to Jingoku on this world?'
'We were trying to manifest jade as a magical reaction to the Taint of Jingoku seeping into reality, but unfortunately the experiment was a failure'
*cue mountain sized Oni rampaging about in the background*
'you don't say.'
And I imagine trying to artificially produce the physical manifestation of purity, spice, and everything nice is not going to go all that well. Frankly it sounds like a classic Isawa experiment gone wrong just waiting to happen.
'Why in the Kami's names would you open a portal to Jingoku on this world?'
'We were trying to manifest jade as a magical reaction to the Taint of Jingoku seeping into reality, but unfortunately the experiment was a failure'
*cue mountain sized Oni rampaging about in the background*
'you don't say.'
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Sirrocco
Pedantic
Okay. An idea for Appropriately Dramatic Tech (and everything else) System.
Each family has five resources:
- Earth: Prosperity: material wealth, and everything it can buy
- Fire: Learning: Technological edge, the raw power of your researchers, and how knowledgeable your people are in general
- Water: Manpower: Competent, trained individuals, standing by to do your will in large numbers
- Air: Influence: Spies, favors, contacts, blackmail and all those other little things that make your time at court easier and more effective
- Void: Spiritual: Kind of like Manpower, but for monks, shugenja, friendly kami, and so forth. Your ability to call the supernatural to your aid.
You get a certain amount from each holding. Generally, the holdings that have been around for a while and that are well-developed produce a lot more. A minor mining concern might produce just a point or two of prosperity, while a major city would likely produce at least some of everything. Every turn you fill up to your income level. You can assign some of your income to upkeeps (which will subtract every turn), you can spend some doing various specific things (which helps generate your die pool) and you can leave some fallow (which is useful since it can get spent automatically on handling attacks/events if and when you need it, but anything left over goes away at the end of the year regardless). Protip: if you've pissed off the Scorpion, you probably want to leave a decent amount of Influence in reserve.
Dice rolls are based on your max stats for the type, but actually making those rolls requires resource expenditure. Supporting stats (like Learning to represent improved gear for your troops, or Prosperity to represent wining and dining a foreign dignitary) can offer rolled but not kept dice. You can also spend resources to let someone else roll using your stats. This represents things like loaning technicians to the Crab to keep their ships running in best conditions, or offering lavish gifts to the Crane (giving them points in Prosperity) in exchange for them intervening on your behalf (letting you use their Influence). This is the basis of trade in the system.
The technology, then, is very simple. Lesser research would be a matter of spending a bit of Learning to get a bonus on another rollor set up for a more major endeavor, while Major Research would be spending a lot of Learning investigating a source of inspiration. Even better, for Major Research, you can invest over multiple turns, and keep investing, adding to your eventual dice pool or otherwise improving things. You can choose to cash that in on any turn, but if for some reason the research center comes under attack, you'll have to mobilize the armies to hold off the foe for Just Long Enough before you can hit the "cash it in" button and make that die roll.
Each family has five resources:
- Earth: Prosperity: material wealth, and everything it can buy
- Fire: Learning: Technological edge, the raw power of your researchers, and how knowledgeable your people are in general
- Water: Manpower: Competent, trained individuals, standing by to do your will in large numbers
- Air: Influence: Spies, favors, contacts, blackmail and all those other little things that make your time at court easier and more effective
- Void: Spiritual: Kind of like Manpower, but for monks, shugenja, friendly kami, and so forth. Your ability to call the supernatural to your aid.
You get a certain amount from each holding. Generally, the holdings that have been around for a while and that are well-developed produce a lot more. A minor mining concern might produce just a point or two of prosperity, while a major city would likely produce at least some of everything. Every turn you fill up to your income level. You can assign some of your income to upkeeps (which will subtract every turn), you can spend some doing various specific things (which helps generate your die pool) and you can leave some fallow (which is useful since it can get spent automatically on handling attacks/events if and when you need it, but anything left over goes away at the end of the year regardless). Protip: if you've pissed off the Scorpion, you probably want to leave a decent amount of Influence in reserve.
Dice rolls are based on your max stats for the type, but actually making those rolls requires resource expenditure. Supporting stats (like Learning to represent improved gear for your troops, or Prosperity to represent wining and dining a foreign dignitary) can offer rolled but not kept dice. You can also spend resources to let someone else roll using your stats. This represents things like loaning technicians to the Crab to keep their ships running in best conditions, or offering lavish gifts to the Crane (giving them points in Prosperity) in exchange for them intervening on your behalf (letting you use their Influence). This is the basis of trade in the system.
The technology, then, is very simple. Lesser research would be a matter of spending a bit of Learning to get a bonus on another rollor set up for a more major endeavor, while Major Research would be spending a lot of Learning investigating a source of inspiration. Even better, for Major Research, you can invest over multiple turns, and keep investing, adding to your eventual dice pool or otherwise improving things. You can choose to cash that in on any turn, but if for some reason the research center comes under attack, you'll have to mobilize the armies to hold off the foe for Just Long Enough before you can hit the "cash it in" button and make that die roll.
Sirrocco
Pedantic
"What? Don't you know anything? Jade and Crystal are the tears of Amaterasu, where they struck the earth and were frozen in the air. If we want to generate more True Jade, we need to find a way to make Amaterasu cry. Now get to it!"
Inspiration in this case isn't a resource. It's more of a trait. It's things that you can get and investigate (like Black Scrolls, or the corpses of your enemies). Essentially, it's things that you acquire via plot, and Major Research requires it because Major Research projects take the form of "Examine/Investigate *blah*, in an attempt to *blah*". If done properly, they often result in permanent traits. If done improperly, they *also* often result in permanent traits.
Also, @Maugan Ra, I would encourage you to *not* put in rules about adding multiple people, or at least to say that each endeavor has a certain maximum. We're likely to have a lot more heroes than actions per turn. If we can double up for various benefits, then people will be spending lots of effort trying to optimize on who to send where for what and it will get very finicky. If we get one at a time by default, we'll just pick whoever looks best for the purpose (for whatever reason) and send them, leaving the majority of our back bench fallow (as they should be) to go have their own adventures and/or show up to events/attacks in useful but unassigned ways.
The more characters you have, the more shallow you want them to be able to be, and this game is looking to have a *lot* of characters. Unless you carve the number of characters *way* down, I'd say we'd be well-served to have, say, half of the phoenix characters never see screen-time.
- Location
- his hidden lair
"What could make Lady Sun cry more than seeing pure and virgin land succumb to the Taint of Jingoku?"
Point is, while I'm all for research, we have to consider the issue before we try and fix it lest we just make a problem worse.
#MadScienceResponsibly
It's pure resource. Think of it as craft materials in RPGs, you need X quality and Y nature to build item Z of rank X, but if you have Quality < X, you're going to take the extra quests to rank it up to the requirement.
Accuracy to reality is optional. The goals of the research system as I understand it here:
1) Be convenient for Maugan to run.
2) Generate a dynamic pool of options rather than a checklist. Most empire building games wind up with tech as a checklist and thus no actual decision is being made.
3) Avoid accrued benefits from breaking the game, as research that gives broad spanning bonuses rapidly break the economic/dice roll system.
4) Avoid benefits from accumulating to the point of causing management overhead. You don't want a list of 30 circumstantial bonuses that Maugan has to reference every roll to make sure they aren't involved. Two ways of dealing with this commonly are:
4.1) Upgrade slots, where your researched improvements occupy a fixed number of slots you can equip them to. Phoenix, as the research heavy clan, probably has them maxed out with a few spares in sideboard that can be swapped in(e.g. your Better Lasers long range starship snipers are competing with the Phoenix Thrusters for shipyard time and maintenance on your vessels) with an action, but other clans might only have their priority slots maxed out(e.g. Crab stuffed all the armor upgrades in, Scorpion all the stealth/intel)
4.2) Expiry, where all researched items become obsoleted after X turns of use as the baseline catches up.
5) Involve the rest of the action types. Whether this is exploring for exotics, or finding out some lack, you don't just do all the medieval fantasy quest Standard Industrialization Package out of the blue. The nerds shouldn't just lock themselves in the labs for the next century. It might not be realistic, but it makes research items easier to generate for the GM if it's involved in other plots.
Crasian01
Insane Incubator
Ah, I see. That's very interesting, thanks for the clarification.
----
In other news, I present more NPCs:
[x] Shiba Hiraku: An experienced courtier, Shiba Hiraku's claim to fame is not so much any one accomplishment so much as a curious ability to consistently negotiate favorable terms for the Phoenix clan combined with seemingly unimpeachable conduct. Rumor has it that Shiba Hiraku's secret is a vast network of ninja, as well as not inconsiderable dabbling in the ninja arts herself. As to the latter, it is surely an exaggeration of Hiraku's tendency to converse and make friends with the lower classes, then often using what she has learned in negotiations to pressure her opponents. Whatever the case may be, Shiba Hiraku undeniably has fingers in many pies, and is a leading member of the Phoenix Clan's diplomatic core.
[x] Isawa Inari: Isawa Inari is something of a mix of contradictions: he is young and filled with the recklessness of youth, yet also an extremely careful researcher with copious, detailed notes on the work he does. He is immensely proud of his heritage and his family, yet deeply humble about his own abilities as a scientist and as an engineer. Isawa Inari specializes in the element of Fire, and studies under Isawa Akio as an Acolyte. Despite his youth, Isawa Inari has the distinction of being one of Isawa Akio's favorites on account of both his keen intellect and his unusual intuition of the fire kami's meanings and intentions.
--[x] Isawa Sae: One of the Initiates assigned to Inari, it is rumored that Sae is ultimately responsible for much of the bookkeeping that makes Inari's work possible. Sae's greatest strength is her ability to analyze design and engineering problems, and hopes that her tutelage under Inari will allow her to gain better intuition for the kami and the way they behave.
--[x] Isawa Yuno: One of the Initiates assigned to Inari, Yuno is the youngest of the four students assigned to Inari. She is a hard worker and has a surprising intuition for certain aspects of work as a shugenja, but is troubled by being only just ahead of the curve at the School of FIre.
--[x] Isawa Hayako: One of the initiates assigned to Inari.
--[x] Isawa Daisuke: One of the initiates assigned to Inari.
- Location
- London, England
In retrospect, deciding to start an Empire-building quest before even figuring out half the mechanics was a terrible idea.
I now see why so many quests of this nature use the same CKII mechanical framework.
Updates are likely to be delayed while I actually sit down and play test some of my ideas and suggestions from the player base.
I now see why so many quests of this nature use the same CKII mechanical framework.
Updates are likely to be delayed while I actually sit down and play test some of my ideas and suggestions from the player base.