I'm currently working on Katanapunk! and I've been thinking about the priorities and what to place in the character section of the book.

As this game is set in 18th Century Japan Race really has no point as a priority. Now I guess I could easily just get rid of Race and reduce the priorities from A-F to A-E. What are people's opinions of this? Good Bad or Ugly?

any other thoughts on human only games and what to make of the priority system in these cases?

JK...

I really don't like the race priority in TROS. I understand its designed to make the rare races, well, rare, but from my point of view its up to the Senneschal to decide if a player who wants to be a rare race shouldb e allowed to do so in that campaign. To me the choice to be a member of a super rare race like the Sidhe or a gifted human is a story and character concept issue. If you want to do it, and your senneschal says its cool for the story of the campaign, why should you take a hit on your other priorities for it? Doesn't make sense to me.

Malechi wrote: Now I guess I could easily just get rid of Race and reduce the priorities from A-F to A-E. What are people's opinions of this? Good Bad or Ugly?

I assume there is no sorcery in Katanapunk? If sorcery exists then the race priority can be just stripped down to the two choices of B and F.

If sorcery doesn't exist then I wonder if the book going to be a supplement to the TROS book or a complete game itself? If the former, you could just leave the priority system alone and say that since there are only humans, human is the only option allowed for race. Then everyone can just always dump their lowest priority into race. This would have essentially the same effect as reducing priorities to A-E but you don't have to deal with how this effects other parts ot the game, such as insight.

Firstly there won't be any Sorcery in KPunk at this point. We're steering away from the fantastical ninjas and DBZ type manga stuff and leaning towards down-and-dirty jidai geki.

Secondly, KPunk will most definitely be a mini-supplement for TROS :)
The other option we thought of was trying to address the mismatch between social station and monetary wealth. Particularly in mid- to late-Edo era Merchants and Entertainers could be quite wealthy and indeed more wealthy than some samurai. However in the social heirarchy they still held a place below artisans and farmers and only marginally above outcast eta and heinin. We thought we could have two priorities one which was your birth line with:Major Clan Samurai, Minor Samurai, Farmers, Artisans, Merchant/Entertainers and finally Outcasts giving you priorities A through F. Secondly you'd have a wealth modifying priority which gives you different levels of wealth within that particular Social Class. This helps stratify things nicely I think. Wealthy through Dirt Poor matching up to A through F priorities. This would essentially give you a table with 6 values for each of the social classes for your starting cash. Any thoughts on this? Too complicated? Unnecessary?


cheers

Jason K

p.s. we've just managed to secure a new artist for the project too... I'll be posting some of his art to the Kpunk website later today... I'm really excited by his art.. it has a traditional japanese woodblock print look and its really refreshing...

:)

That sounds like a really good idea for any campaign where race isn't an important issue. I personally like the idea of seperating social importance and wealth because oftentimes they did not go hand in hand and this became and increasing source of friction within society and a major agent for the downfall of the landed nobility in Europe.

Tash, that should be easy to solve be Senechal decree. Simply allow people to raise their wealth by one rank if they drop their standing one at the same time.

i.e. buy Social C, and you can be a poor noble (standing B, wealth D) or a wealthy merchant (wealth B, standing D).

This also ensures wealth and standing don't diverge too much.