Working with Shinobi
Working with Shinobi
In our Podcast, Court Games, our episode "Daidoji and Shinobi" we had a discussion of how to use Shinobi in an RPG L5R Campaign.
Court Games Episode:
CourtGames Web: http://ow.ly/gKaM50AKIu1
Apple: http://ow.ly/UEbX50AKItX
Spotify: http://ow.ly/ZCrO50AKItW
In Courts of Stone, the game designers explains the problem of Shinobi, or Rogue-type characters, within a gaming party. These PCs tend to act on their own, taking actions away from the party, and often bypassing the party completely for long periods of time. They tend to have intricate plans that take time to design out, which again, take time away from the other players. If all the characters are shinobi, then this problem is bypassed, but that is not on theme for much L5R fantasy.
Courts of Stone proposes leaving the room for a fixed period of time, letting the Shinobi player or players make a plan, return, receive a summary of the plan, and then use opportunities and flashbacks to assume all the setup to minimize time taken up by the Shinobi on stealth or subterfuge plans. This works as a way of trying to shorten such distraction, but it has its own complications as the player is left trying to fish for their missing pieces and they still take up time.
Court Games Episode:
CourtGames Web: http://ow.ly/gKaM50AKIu1
Apple: http://ow.ly/UEbX50AKItX
Spotify: http://ow.ly/ZCrO50AKItW
In Courts of Stone, the game designers explains the problem of Shinobi, or Rogue-type characters, within a gaming party. These PCs tend to act on their own, taking actions away from the party, and often bypassing the party completely for long periods of time. They tend to have intricate plans that take time to design out, which again, take time away from the other players. If all the characters are shinobi, then this problem is bypassed, but that is not on theme for much L5R fantasy.
Courts of Stone proposes leaving the room for a fixed period of time, letting the Shinobi player or players make a plan, return, receive a summary of the plan, and then use opportunities and flashbacks to assume all the setup to minimize time taken up by the Shinobi on stealth or subterfuge plans. This works as a way of trying to shorten such distraction, but it has its own complications as the player is left trying to fish for their missing pieces and they still take up time.
Here are some suggestions to integrate Shinobi PCs into a 5th Edition L5R campaign to keep them in the same range of actions as the other PCs.
- Allow Shinobi PCs to do a shinobi-style action in their downtime to gather a resource for their party, either gaining an item or benefit, or causing a debuff of some sort to their opponents, or getting a clue or something similar. The Shinobi action is done similar to (and at the same rate as) other downtime actions and get boons or gives debuffs to the same scale as other downtime actions. It must be distilled down to 1 roll.
- Add an element of risk and increased benefit to the shinobi downtime action by making it so that, on failure of their Shinobi roll, the PC must take 3 strife and make a secondary roll by the means of their choice to explain how they escape the consequence of their failed action. If that roll is unsuccessful, it causes a complication...they aren't immediately found out, but someone, somewhere, has learned something that the GM can and will save to use against the party at a later date. If their strife causes them to become compromised or have an outburst, this could have an additional impact on the roll, possibly creating a complication even if the character succeeds.
- For big shinobi actions that are much larger than what should be a buff or debuff, but instead could be considered a goal, such as the assassination of an enemy or the searching of a key room in a mystery that would have lots of information, require that shinobi action to be embedded in an intrigue, where the other party members are also acting, perhaps to distract, or even for other goals. The Shinobi and the other PCs each roll initiative and take one action/dice roll, and the intrigue length is the length of time the Shinobi has to be successful. If the PCs win the intrigue, the Shinobi gets the full time, or maybe even more. If the NPCs win the intrigue ends early, cutting the Shinobi's time short and they must have finished their Shinobi feat in the time or potentially fail and get caught unless they have added enough time to escape.
Especially if there are multiple Shinobi acting within the scene, or Shinobi are conflicting with other Shinobi while the Intrigue is occuring, you can extract the Shinobi(s) initiative and have them acting at the end of the turn, in initiative order among the shinobi.
