The question of how to use abilities and their multiple relavances is something I've just been addressing while writing political game rules for the LOT5R conversion. Unfortunately I left them at home today but I will try to bring them in tomorrow to post, about a page and a half of rules IIRC. I think it is right on to say that abilities can be seen from multiple perspectives, and that any given ability could appear in multiple boxes in the character sheet rather than one. It all depends - beauty, as they say in the classics, is in the eye of the beholder. I think an ability should be recorded on the character sheet as the CHARACTER thinks of it, rather than how society reacts to them. I would thus probably put Mercenary as a Mental Skill (hearing orders over battle, negotiating contracts, getting going when the going gets tough, that sort of thing) but treat it as:
I realise I have just been using my own jargon; a Reputation is a kind of "virtual attribute" in the rules I have for politics, hopefully to follow tomorrow for comment.
Doug wrote:
> Glory in L5R has a social-status underpinning. By treating this as a
> Relationship this can be taken care of... ...and lets you have a
> rating for both Empire and Clan (or whatever).
Right. I've actually included stuff like Emperors Right Hand, Emperors Left Hand as Relationships for Lion and Crane respectively, to highlight the distinction in the clans' vision of their relationship to the Emperor, and by proxy the rest of society. It's been a very interesting exercise... bring on the Emperors Underhand <grin>.
What I'm going to do is pitch it like this: an Audience will take into account personality traits and the rest of it according to their prejudices, so no reputation or whatever is always relevant in every political circumstance. However, many public bodies will make reference to those aspects that the society collectively holds as virtues - and in Rokugan, these will chiefly be Honour and Glory. It will be quite easy to substitute or employ a recognised Social Virtue in many situations, roughly duplicating the role of Honour and Glory in LOT5R. As you say, the correct route is to treat them as relationships.
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