Re: Barbarian Adventures

From: contracycle <gamartin_at_...>
Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2002 15:54:06 -0000

> Ha! You must be joking. L5R completly ignores the whole question

By no means - the basic rice economy is discussed in some moderate depth, and appears in game story - the hijacking of rice by the Crane. This is, correctly, a form of currency speculation, and that was easy to see given the discussion of "what is a koku". What L5R failed to do was relate the rice economy to the coin economy in way; but this, I'm afraid, is an order of magnitude beyond the simple "there is, like, gold, and people like it" explanation common to RPG by ommission. I have yet to see a European FRPG that tackled the currents that became the corn laws, and I hasten to add I would not want to see one that made this kind of thing its focus. OTOH, having a rough understanding of this stuff gives you lots of ancillary information about what kinds of goods are being transported on the roads, in ballpark volumes, or what kind of things would be especially disruptive to a particular established economy.

> ...to the extent that playing a "religious character" becomes quite
> a challenge... L5R Religion is a hodge-podge of Confucianism,
> Buddhism and Shinto, with no real explanation of why they are mixed
> together, or who deals with which function.

Totally agree, the religious stuff is rubbish.

> the "Archeology" Approach. Hmm, here's an object, now lets find an
> excuse for fitting it in to the culture. The problem is that it
> leaves you with a lot of unanswered questions and no way to
> extrapolate. We know that performing a Tea Ceremony will allow you
> to recover void points, but we don't know why - Is it the Tea, the
> Ceremony, both, neither.

IIRC that is discussed, it is the discipline of the ceremony. Point taken about criticism of archeological methodology too; but we are not actually discussing the dangers of the fit-the-part problem, because any object an RPG author introduces cannot be challenged - it is their vision of their world. What I am proposing instead is that there is virtue to the discussion of the physical world as the physical world.

> Hero Wars works the other way around - We
> know that in myth, peacekeepers covered weapons with rugs to
> prevent bloodshed, so now we know why Ernaldans throw rugs over
> fueding Orlanthi's swords to defuse a brawl...

That sums up my criticism pretty neatly.

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