Honor in Legend of the Five Rings

 In my previous entries for this blog, I wrote about a whole lot of things: The history of Japan and the way it incorporated different Chinese philosophies with some home-grown philosophies of its own,  Who the Samurai were,  the evolution and purpose of Bushido, and What honor means in English.  I could, maybe should, write about what Honor means in Japan, and maybe I'll take a crack at it someday,  but I'm not really qualified and I hope that I've shared that there are enough different philosophies floating around that it's clear that the answer would be dependent on which philosophic framework you're working in, just as Honor changes depending on context when used in English.

Instead, I wanted to write about what Honor means in Legend of the Five Rings.

Even from 1E, L5R has included advancement mechanics for status, glory, and honor.  These advancement mechanics also have related mechanics and roleplay consequences in conflict.   Having mechanics at all means that these things are supposed to be part of the conflicts that go into gameplay.   The tag line for the game from early on was: Where Honor is stronger than Steel.  It's meant to be important.  But what is it, as interpreted in the context of L5R?

In reading how Honor is described in the RPG Books, the kinds of things that generate or lose you honor, and how Honor works in the various clans, I have come to the conclusion that Honor is how well you measure up to the expectations of your social role.  In L5R, that role is generally Samurai.   You are measuring yourself against a scale from 'Everything a Samurai should never be' to the ultimate 'The Perfect Samurai'

The Perfect Samurai, as defined by Society as a whole,  is a purely collectivist and philosophical construct. It perfectly embodies a role, not as a real person.  It has little value for individuality or freedom of thought or expression.  It is not possible as a human being to reach that end, or even desirable.  But all Samurai in Rokugan, even non-samurai, would know as members of their society,  how well they internally paired up to that ideal.

The most dedicated Scorpion knows he is not the exemplar Samurai the most noble Lion is.  He believes that he cannot be...that there are ends more important than keeping to the strict bonds of the social role 'Samurai', and those things he is willing to sacrifice in order to achieve those ends.  If they slip poison into an enemy's cup, they know it is not what a correct and proper samurai, the Perfect Samurai, would be doing.  

Honor is not a matter of opinion, at least not opinion that can be fixed in any meaningful way.  Even if the Scorpion's player says 'I don't think my character will think that poisoning this person is a bad thing', that doesn't make the action of poisoning honorable.  If the Scorpion were not of an extremely low honor score already,  they would lose honor for doing it.  Honor is how close that character is to Rokugan's image of the Perfect Samurai.  In my opinion, if a Samurai were to undergo enough mental torture, humiliation, and beatdown, they could be convinced that they were less honorable than their actions would warrant, and if they were surrounded by sycophants and babied enough, they could come to believe that they were more honorable than their actions warrant, but this would require some serious storytelling and consideration and would generally require an adjustment of honor once they realized the standards they were living to were not the same as the rest of society. Just the character believing what they are doing is the right thing to do is not sufficient.

Honor is dependent on your actions, or lack thereof.  The Scorpion's deep and profound meditations on Honor will not make him more honorable.  His words alone do not change his honor.  He can try to define down or modify honor to improve himself, but it is what he does that will alter his honor, and the GM will award or remove honor accordingly.

For Honor is internal.  That Scorpion would still lose honor for poisoning the cup, even if the poison never detected and they are never found out.  They know that is not what an Ideal Samurai should do.

The Honor ideal varies from clan to clan as the image of the Perfect Samurai varies. This causes minor differences in what being Honorable means from one Clan to another and means the perfect measure you are going up against varies between the clans.  A Unicorn Samurai sees the perfect Samurai as more Compassionate than a Crab Samurai, and therefore if the Unicorn fails to be Compassionate, they fail to meet that ideal more than a Crab Samurai of equal honor would if they experienced the same failure to be Compassionate. A Crab Samurai  sees the perfect Samurai as more Courageous than a Unicorn Samurai would, and therefore if the Crab fails to be Courageous, they fail to meet the ideal more than a Unicorn samurai would of the same honor rank.  

The default or initial amount of Honor varies depending on your school or starting job.  How well an individual Samurai will see themselves compared to the Ideal Samurai varies from school to school.  Different starting honor: by doing what they do by default, the graduates of these different schools see themselves as hewing closer to or further away from the expectations of the social role of a Perfect Samurai.  Both the typical Crab Bushi and the typical Unicorn Bushi, with their lower starting Honor, would know that they do not fulfill the role of 'The Perfect Samurai' as well as a typical Lion Bushi or typical Crane Bushi. They likely do not want to.

​Honor is logarithmic.  The higher in honor you are, the closer you are to that ideal samurai,  the harder it is to become even closer to that perfect ideal, and the easier it is to make a misstep that drags you further away from that ideal.   

The higher Honor a character has, the fewer options they have open to them.  If a character does not care if they match a societal Ideal Samurai, they are free to use means that would not be used by the Ideal Samurai to achieve their ends, like, say, Poison.  The same options are available to characters with high Honor, but if they use such means, they will very quickly be dragged away from being high Honor. The act of using such methods makes you low Honor.  If a character values their honor, they would not use such methods, which makes achieving your goals more difficult.  Most  low-starting-honor School members tend to chafe at such bonds.

Overall, this gamified definition of Honor matches the definition, in English, of Internal Honor - An internal code of virtue and behavior that captures that individual's obligations to their role and their social group.  
The character's role is Samurai. Their social group is The Empire adjusted by their Clan.   Their amount of Internal Honor is how well they fulfill the code of virtue and behavior that describes the obligations of that Role.

The other two gamified attributes similar to Honor in L5R: Status, and Glory.

If Honor in L5R is Internal Honor,  Glory can be seen as External Honor - The external recognition of respect, status, and praise, especially by those considered praise-worthy themselves.  In 1-4E, Glory was your increasing reputation and recognition as an admirable person, and Infamy was your increasing reputation and recognition as a not-admirable person. If you had glory, you could influence people with your fame and their admiration for you, while you could use your infamy to intimidate people.  In 5E this has changed...Infamy and glory are on the same scale. This does not shift the definition of Glory, though. It just doubles down on the idea that Glory is not just 'fame', but it is 'reputation of being a very fine, upstanding person'.  Glory is earned doing public deeds that others find admirable and worthy, or even better than, your role as a Samurai.  The key attribute is that it is public.   The GM awards glory gains and penalties when the glorious action is observed or noted.  As External Honor,  Glory can also be potentially considered Face from the perspective of a Collectivist Society, though that has other implications.  

The last attribute, Status, is the Position the person has in the society, or the fealty network that Rokugan posits for Samurai and Lords, with the highest status person being the Emperor, and the lowest status persons being the bottommost caste of society.  You advance in Status by being awarded new job titles or more prestigious appointments. Someone greater than you has to give you status.  This is the same for 1-4E and for 5E.

These three attributes work together to create the conflicts the storytelling of the game is designed to tell.  But they all together work to describe the relationship of any Character to the ideal of 'The Perfect Samurai':

• Honor - How well do my actions compare to those a great Samurai would do?
• Glory - How much does society believe and recognize me as a great Samurai?
• Status - What rights and responsibilities do I have because I have been recognized as a great Samurai?

Not every player and not every character will want to have stories about their character becoming a better, more ideal, samurai.  But Legend of the Five Rings is created to indulge the role-playing fantasy of 'I am a magical samurai', and therefore has these mechanics for it.