OK. Because LOT5R occurs primarily in the social domain, politics are an ever-present consideration. So in order to approach organising the LOT5R attributye sets and so on, I had to have some idea how they were going to operate in the political arena. This is the proposal I have come up with, and I've tried to work it out as completely as I can. It's rather larger than I thought, and I'd appreciate any comments or criticisms, especially as I am not 100% solid on the mechanics and may have made an error. Thanx
ROKUGANI POLITICS FOR HERO WARS
Ø REPUTATIONS
Characters have Reputations that appear under their Relationships zone on
the character sheet. Mostly, Reputations indicate a feature or historical
event that is widely associated with a character by others. Reputations
have a rating like any other ability, to represent the fact that the
character has a dynamic relationship with their various Reputations, and
that the representation is not simply a property the character possesses
without variation. Reputations may be raised or lowered in the same manner
as any other ability.
Not all reputations are positive; different social circles will observe different things. For this reason, Reputations act in much the same way that Followers do (and indeed, followers themselves could constitute Reputations under certain conditions). Due to the subjective and variable nature of such opinions, the factors that a given audience will take into account vary from case to case, so a temporary rating called Credibility is calculated ad hoc when political action commences. The Credibility rating is added to the TN of the ability with which the character makes their public argument to form the AP total for the political Extended Contest.
Ø POLITICAL ACTIONS
Firstly, it is important to distinguish between a political action and a
persuasive action. Persuasive actions are "combats" and conducted by the
usual Hero Wars rules in which two characters strive to convince each other
of a certain position, while Political Actions describe attempts by
contenders to sway an audience. An Audience might be a panel of judges, a
council of Clan daimyos, a mob of demoralised troops, or a jury of peers.
Speakers before such bodies usually employ some sort of rhetorical or
intellectual ability for the strength of their argument, and abilities like
Voice or other performance-affecting abilities are reserved for augmenting
and generating edges.
A Political action is one which occurs in a public forum, and in which the audience itself passes judgement on the combatants. To represent the audience's opinion of the speaker, a number of Reputation abilities from each speaker are tallied according to the prejudices of the audience. Not all Reputations need to be taken into account; a bandit throng would probably favour abilities such as Leads From The Front or Aggressive, while a Winter Court debate may respect Honour, Witty Repartee or Learned Argument. The TN's of these abilities are totalled as the Credibility rating and add to the AP total for that character. Conversely, Reputations of which the audience disapproves are added to the AP total of their opponent.
For Example, Mirumoto Yasuyo attempts to sway the court of Bayushi Hyubo to allow him to lead an expedition hunting bandits. Looking at Yasuyo's character sheet, the GM decides that the Mirumoto's reputation for being Ready For Anything stands in his favour, as well as his Glory and his widely-known knowledge of Track Through Wilderness. These TN's are added together to form his Credibility rating for this Political Action, which is added to TN of his nominated attribute to make the AP total for Yasuyo's attempts to sway the court.
When the Yasuyo makes his argument to the assembled courtiers, he nominates his Glib Tongue as the TN to roll against. The AP total is not taken from this ability alone, but adds the relevant Reputations as if they were followers.
If a character nominates to conduct the combat with an ability that has already been taken into account as a Reputation, it is not counted twice to make the AP total. If a character has a weakness or flaw or other trait that might turn the audience against them, their opponent may add its TN to their AP total.
On the other hand, Hyobu's son Jocho has Popular at Court, Glory and High Social Position. Furthermore, Jocho is going to attack Yasuyo's reputation for being an Impulsive Maverick, and adds the TN of this ability on Mirumoto's character sheet to his own AP total.
Ø DARK SECRETS
In cases where a character has a well-established negative Reputation,
perhaps for some indiscretion or public embarrassment, this acts as a
"follower" of their opponent. Characters may also have secrets that hinder
their ambitions, although typically these will not come into play unless
actually referred to by opposition argument. In the case that a contestant
is able to suddenly reveal an opponent's dark secret, the TN of this new
Reputation is added to their AP total. This is roughly equivalent to having
a new "ally" with their full AP allotment join a battle in progress.
Of course, an audience may only take into account abilities of which it is aware, and hence the value of court contacts (or even public heralds) who can convey this information become apparent. Equally, such a negative reputation need not even be true - a suitable ability might be employed to sow false information and blacken someone's name, although this sort of political action is usually conducted outside of the public forum itself. On the other hand, excited whispers behind fluttering fans as new information is passed around, hecklers from the floor and tense muttering all allow opportunities for the narration of an Extended Contest, and add to the flavour of the event.
Ø STANDING AND FLOATING BODIES
Public bodies that have a formal or semiformal existence often develop the
habit of looking for a certain regular set of reputations to form the
Credibility of their petitioners or supplicants. These may be recorded by a
GM ahead of time and usually include some of the "public virtues" common to
the culture at hand. For example, in Rokugan a petitioners Glory is almost
always taken into account, and circumstances often arise that call on
Honour. Floating Bodies, usually having irregular membership and meeting
intermittently, have less opportunity to form a "personality" than standing
bodies, and their range of influences tends to be wider (for better or
worse). By their nature as civic institutions however, the prejudices of
both types tend toward the conventional and conservative, and they tend to
be formed from the ranking members of society. Membership of Standing, and
sometimes Floating, bodies is itself a potential source of a Reputation or
other social status.
Ø POINTS OF ORDER
Single speakers need not conduct debates, and indeed the members of a
faction supporting a proposition are the more regular pattern. These are
conducted as AP transfers to a nominated leader, who is usually someone of
prior social prominence. Reputations are taken from the nominated speaker,
although often they will include Reputations that make reference to the
faction that they represent or the social virtues of the society in which
they are prominent. Contests conducted by lengthy dialogue and technical
argument, with multiple speakers and small AP bids, are typical of
bureaucratised institutions, while the ad hoc varieties are likely to be
conducted by powerful personalities, heated argument and large AP bids,
being resolved in only a few exchanges. Formal forums also often feature
much procedural and methodological argument, and are generally more
sympathetic to abilities like Scholarly Education. In some cases, a quick
contest on abilities like Legal Wrangling might even cause a Reputation
supporting an opponent to be ruled invalid (the "Objection!" factor).
Ø DEALING WITH THE MOB
Characters debating with opponents in front of an ungoverned or ad hoc crowd
are said to be dealing with the mob. Mobs are usually more contradictory
than established bodies, and seldom respect the public virtues by which the
rest of society operates. Indeed, mobs are pretty unlikely to be familiar
with the personal histories of most speakers, and unless they have a
prominent social position or have emerged from the mob itself as a leader,
they will seldom have much Credibility to contribute personally other than
the ability with which they conduct the contest (usually Oratory or
similar). Instead, mobs rely on the Moods that served to motivate the mob,
and any speaker who can appeal to these factors may take the TN of that
ability as a follower if they win the exchange in which they refer to the
Mood. Most mobs will include a decent amount of Fear and Trepidation, but
by their nature this will be counterbalanced by a Mood such as Righteous
Indignation, Ethnic Prejudice or Fear Of Starvation. Mobs are
contradictory, excitable and prone to decisive (but seldom irrational)
action. Speakers who Fumble in front of Mobs risk rotten fruit and even
personal injury.
Ø RUMOURS, LIES AND DIRTY TRICKS
As the Bayushi family ability "Treachery 101" suggests, foul play is not
altogether unknown in the courts or on the battlefields of Rokugan. Those
seeking to intervene in public events are usually by their nature subtle and
devious. The most direct approach is to attribute a negative reputation to
someone through rumour, innuendo or outright deception. Such activities
require an extended contest against the usually-unwitting victim. Often
this will be against one of the common social virtues, and in Rokugan the
Honour ability is a primary example. If the attempt is successful, the
victim might find themselves struggling under the burden of a negative
reputation they do not even know they have. When making the contest, the
audience is considered to be the same forum in which the contest is expected
to take place, it is merely that the character will have to go about this
over time and often in other places. A character with an appropriate
ability may, if successful, assign a Reputation to the victim within that
forum. The rating of the assigned Reputation is equal to that of the
ability with which it was inflicted. These contests are usually conducted
as covert activities of the slanderer against a resistance equal to the
value of an ability of the target chosen by the GM, usually their highest.
Often, this will be some of sort social virtue or other popularly favoured
character attribute, possibly even social rank (the Emperor, for example, is
effectively impossible to slander since everyone knows that the Emperor is
infallible). Alternatively, a reputation as a talented Go player might be
sufficient to resist suggestions that a character committed some
uncharacteristically stupid blunder.
If the victim should become aware of such active sabotage, they may attempt to counter-slander, although if both sides persist in such behaviour they may each inflict so many negative reputations on the other that both become laughing stocks. Some characters might attempt to actively spread positive information, and this should be treated as AP lending to the victims resistance TN. This sort of thing is often carried out with the very abilities that might be used to create such falsehoods in the first place, such as Gossip, Lie With A Straight Face or Rumour Mill, and if allies are involved on either side the usual rules for multiple character participation in extended contests apply. Sometimes characters will attempt to "stunt" a forum by bringing on some surprise piece of evidence, witness or fact, or even stage a mini-drama with stooges in the audience. Many of these can be treated as Dark Secrets, if they attack the characters general status. Others, however, are intended to convince the audience of a particular fact, even if only temporarily, and convince them to act precipitately and predictably in consequence. In a certain sense, the character is trying to stunt the audience into becoming mob, usually by appealing to disgust, hatred, fear or other passion. The trick, though, is that it is very difficult to "undo" a public act, even one committed in haste. Stunts need not all be negative, in that a good stunt appealing to sympathy, pride or simple familiarity might serve as a good excuse for augmenting a political action or even cementing hero points to raise a reputation. Some stunts are aimed directly at a character in order to humiliate them, often through an Honour test.
Ø THE ROLE OF HONOUR AND GLORY
Honour and Glory form the primary social virtues in Rokugan, and are the
most likely abilities to be tested by accusation or slander. Almost
everyone in a public forum can be expected to be familiar with a characters
Glory, which represents the their overall status in the empire. Social
prestige tends to be self-reinforcing, and characters with social rank carry
the implied approval of the Celestial Order and the kami. For this reason,
Glory often acts as a floor for the TN of the ability chosen for resistance
or action, for unless another, higher reputation is available the character
can almost always default to their Glory. Honour is a much more personal
matter, and Honour tests are private ones more often than not. Resisting
seduction or bribery, for example, might all be tests of the characters
Honour. Honour tests often have the consequence of decreasing the
characters Glory if they are public indiscretions, and provoking an opponent
into a breach of Honour can damage or even eliminate their Glory. After
all, of what worth is the glory of the unworthy? By itself, however, Honour
has little impact on public affairs, unless the forum has a preference in
that direction (which is quite frequently the case in Rokugan).
Example Continued:
Mirumoto Yasuyo has Reputations of Ready For Anything 13, Glory 1w and Track
Through Wilderness 17, making his Credibility 11w2. Glib Tongue of 15 gives
him an AP total of 66.
However, Jocho has Popular at Court 15, Glory 18w and Social Position 18, and will attack with Snide Innuendo 5w. He also has the aid of Yasuyo's Impulsive Maverick 12, and so has a Credibility rating of 83 and an AP total of 108.
Yasuyo is rolling with a TN of 15 and Jocho with a TN of 5 with a bump. Neither of them gain any benefit from their Honour, as this is after all a Scorpion court.
Ø DEFEAT AND HUMILIATION
If a character suffers defeat in a political action, the consequences range
from the mild to the dire. A lot of this is contextual, and depends on the
relationship between the speaker and the audience, and the individual
natures of the characters concerned.
Complete Victory The forum quickly and firmly accepts the speaker's
motion and grants any additional requests in support of the issue.
Major Victory The forum accepts the motion on the terms in which it was
proposed, and may be persuaded to provide additional support by further
contests.
Minor Victory The forum accepts the motion with reservations, and may
interrogate the character further before coming to a final decision. It will
probably adjourn to confer with advisors before making its decision known.
Marginal Victory The forum accepts the motion with grave doubts, and
may require further contests of persuasion in order to gain all the support
for which the petitioner requested.
Draw The forum will almost always adjourn to discuss the matter in more
depth between themselves, and then fail to come to any firm conclusion.
Usually, this will require resolution through some tie-break mechanism or a
referral to a higher authority.
Marginal Defeat The forum refuses the appeal after an adjournment, although
perhaps with regret. Further persuasive attempts might be made on a
procedural or technical basis, or with new information, in order to achieve
a draw retrospectively, usually in the form of reference to a higher forum.
Minor Defeat Usually after a short consultation, the motion is refused
and explanations for why they were refused are usually given. The character
will seldom suffer consequences or damage to their Honour or Glory.
Major Defeat The character is dishonoured by the decision, and often
suffers a Glory penalty. The forum is firm in its decision if provoked may
even take punitive measures of its own. Associates may also suffer,
although usually to a lesser extent.
Complete Defeat The forum is incensed, and is very likely to want to apply
its own penalties beyond any that may have been presented during the course
of the argument.
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