Honor as a stat

[Judd]

Like Grief, Greed, Hatred and Faith, it seems to me like Honor could be a stat in the game that somehow can effect the world.

After having read the Gotham Gaming Guild's upcoming game, Wrath of the Ronin, I was wondering if anyone had given any thought on how it could work.

Hm.

It would be neat if when you were trying to defeat someone's argument in court, you could roll Honor against their Honor and take those successes and roll them into your Duel of Wits as extra dice that will be added to your total throughout the duel.

Could be neat stuff.

Thoughts?

[Thor]

It's a cool idea. I think you may find it answered in the Reputation rules, which actually have a potent effect on the game now as part of the Circles mechanic.

You can do interesting things like have a region-wide reputation for Honor among the Nobility, but decide that the peasants in your barony know a little more. You have a local infamous reputation for Honor with the peasants there.

So let's say a Samurai wishes to see his Daimyo. He rolls his base Circles attribute + his reputation among the nobility + his Affiliation (they both have an Affiliation to the same clan). You determine the Obstacle based on your relative rank and how soon you, the player, want that NPC to enter the story. If you succeed, you get what you want. If you fail, you don't. Or, your GM can invoke the Enmity Clause and give you a new enemy. :twisted:

You can also Name contacts that you've met before, which provides a bonus to your Circles roll.

So how does this affect a Duel of Wits at all? Simple, before you engage in that Duel, spend some time looking up your contacts and hit them up for support. When the time is right, they'll lend you Helping Dice or Advantage Dice in the Duel.

[luke]

Hi Judd, Thor.

We've toyed with an Honor attribute for a while. The main problem is, for me, that it is a very universal, very loosely defined concept. Its presence in fiction often divides the world into those with honor and those without.

Burning Wheel has a very populist outlook. I can't make a game were the nobles are honorable and the peasants are mean by default. The thought of it just makes me want to retch.

So if such an emotional attribute were to be added, all characters must have it. The old, "You do not understand the meaning of honor, cur!" translate into, "you don't understand what I honor." The assassin or wastrel has his code of honor, and the noble or duelist has his.

Mechanics for Honor, I think, would follow the Greed or Grief paradigm, depending on how involved you wanted to make it.

It would probably work fine in a variety of settings, but only so long as all characters had it.
-L

[Viper]

Perhaps instead of an atribute, it could be a call-on trait, or even a die trait for certain social tests/duel of wits rolls.

[Angaros]

I agree that a character's Honor could affect the world, but I believe it's largely up to the setting to allow it or not. It seems to me that in the world of Pendragon or Bushido, where there is one dominant "code" which is important to the setting, Honor could impact a Duel of Wits or negotiations. In many other settings however, honor is (like Luke said) much more relative and there is no universal code which makes it very difficult to implement the stat/ability/trait in a rules set. Personally, I'd love to see a write-up on such an augment for the DoW rules for a specific setting, but I don't think it'd go well in the core rules. In Pendragon, characters have a passion called Honor (along with other passions such as Loyalty, Love, Hospitality and Hate) which in specific situations can affect the character's abilities. It was a neat tool and the traits and passions of Pendragon did a lot to both define how the character behaved, but also to show what he valued.

[Judd]

No, I wouldn't want to see Honor in the core rules, only in a setting like Bushido, Sengoku or Legend of the Five Rings where having honor was a definite and all players had it to one degree or another.

Going to zero meant your Lord asked you to commit seppoku or become a ronin.

Just curious...I've long been wanting to run a samurai game and the Wrath of the Ronin just inspired me.

[Judd]

I'm feeling traits like:

Emperor's Right Hand: Roll honor vs. opponent's honor when defending the Emperor's word, name or body. The amount by which you win rolls over into bonus dice for your combat.

Friends in Court: When gaining aid for a Duel of Wits before a court of noble samurai, you may take aid dice from friends based on their honor stat, rather than jut their oratory or other relevant skill.

[/b]

[Judd]

Honorable in Death: When a character should be unconscious due to wounds they may spend 1 point of artha in order to perform an action using their Honor as their dice pool. They may do this as many times in a row as they have Artha, one point per action. If they should spend their Artha down to zero, the character is dead once the action is over.


What I am having trouble with is the actual act of acruing and losing honor.

Hm.

I am fully open to the idea that this is a bad idea that should be scrapped, but its still fun to play.
[/b]

[Judd]

Okay, Honor is granted by service to one's lord.

So, when one's Lord sends you on a task, completing it has a certain obstacle or can be broken down into several smaller obstacle tasks.

One uses the skill they used most often during the game as their primary skill in trying to gain honor through completing your Lord's wishes. The GM can also hand out dice that will go towards aiding in the roll at the end of the task.

-OR-

Honor goes up like skills, with a more difficult test necessary to increase it as it goes up and up. You make Honor tests to see how society perceives one's actions, done at the end of every game...

Oh man, I'm floundering here.

Help?

[Verrain]

Well here is another thought for you. You can think of honor as something you have, or something you don't. People don't really have more honor or less honor. It is simply more impressive to retain that honor as you go through life and encounter more situations, kind of like how batting 1000 in baseball is not impressive after your very first at bat but would be incredible at your 100th.

In the download section, you will find write-ups for Sacred Vows. Write-up the basic code of honor and maybe some variants on it. State the strictures of the code, the benefits they gain from adhering to it, and the penalties for losing it. Just a thought.

[Kevin]

I think the answer depends on the setting. If you're being quasi-historical about it, then the only real game benefits from a Code of Honor are:

a) A trait, which will get you artha if you behave honorably under difficult circumstances;

b) a reputation bonus of some sort (haven't seen the new rules so can't comment).

The former is what you do, the latter how you are percieved.

Now, in some settings I guess Honor might be a more palpable force, but in that case I'd treat it as Emotional Magic like Faith. You could even have a mirror to it termed Dishonor for bandits, thieves and the like which they could call on to gain power as well. Actually, I like that idea--it would help centre the game around Honor as a theme.

[eruditus]

On one hand Thor's options are elegant and seem to work well. i dig 'em. However, I feel abzu's pain. I think (as stated) reputation and modified traits and skills would accomplish a lot, even for something like L5R. In a very focused game like L5R i might even keep track of the seven tenents of Bushido along with status/station.

Thus a peasant could attain honor in his station and it would be modified by who he meets.

Thus you might be known for the highs and lows of those tenents - he is particularly compassionate or loyal, or he is insincere or full of vice. An average of these numbers might then create an overall honor score to be used as Thor suggests.

Of course many, many cultures, not just Arthurian britain and japanese, have honor tenents - many latin american/spanish speaking culture cherish their own code of honor and even the ubiquitous honor among thieves - there are just things you don't do. So the idea of using vows is a good one too...sheesh - too many good ways to handle all this.

Personally, for a very honor focused game, my choice would be to have the tenents be attributes and those attributes have manuevers (like martial art special abilities) associated with them and you would handle using the manuevers just as you would MA manuevers.

of course I would add falsehood, ugly truth, persuassion and seduction manuevers as well to manipulate others honor/reputation.

[Roman]

Yeah, I know that I'm a latecomer to the discussion, but what the hey?

And please bear with me if something I say makes you go "HUH?!" I'm still reading the rules, so if what I write sounds like babble, be gentle in letting me know, okay? :-)

I wonder if this fits with Paka's idea--use "Honor" as an emotional attribute, similar to Grief, Greed, and Hate ...

BUT!

... equate Honor with Duty! (Or just call the attribute "Duty"? Whatever.)

Thus, Duty / Honor could be used to enhance rolls having to do with completion of a particular duty / mission assigned by one's superiors, and may apply to rolls dealing with Circles, Reputation, etc. within one's own particular "circle" of associates, clan, etc., but not to social rolls that do not place value on the character's duties.

As an example, because it occurs to me that the above might sound muddled:

A samurai, whose role is valued at most levels of society, might be able to apply his Duty to completing specific tasks demanded by his lord. He might also be able to use it to influence rolls dealing with other samurai, or even peasants (who must defer to samurai). It may not be as useful when dealing with nobility, courtiers, or sneaky ninja types.

Could this also work with players' whose sensibilities, like abzu's, are offended by ascribing honor to social roles rather than individual merit?

Is that at all useful?

*ducks*

~Roman


Okay, Honor is granted by service to one's lord.

So, when one's Lord sends you on a task, completing it has a certain obstacle or can be broken down into several smaller obstacle tasks.

One uses the skill they used most often during the game as their primary skill in trying to gain honor through completing your Lord's wishes. The GM can also hand out dice that will go towards aiding in the roll at the end of the task.

-OR-

Honor goes up like skills, with a more difficult test necessary to increase it as it goes up and up. You make Honor tests to see how society perceives one's actions, done at the end of every game...

Oh man, I'm floundering here.

Help?

[Countercheck]

I could see Honour or Duty being a stat for specific species but not for all. Say, a communist society of anthropomorphic intelligent insects with a bee like society, but where individuals actually have limited free will.

[Count Zero]

What about Shame rather than Honor? Every person has Shame, especially in a society where face matters quite a bit.

It could run along the lines of Grief where if the character ever reaches 10 shame the character commits seppuku.