Offering Choices and Determining Consequences
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If we were to offer GMs only one piece of advice for running Rokugan, it would come down to this: remember that Rokugan is a world of choice and consequence. The ninjō, giri, honor, glory, and status systems all exist to force characters to make choices and to track how those characters evolve over the course of a campaign. Players should have agency to make real decisions on behalf of their characters—that is to say, to choose the way their character wants to confront or resolve a situation—and their characters should experience the fallout of those choices, both personally and in the world around them, based on what is at stake (see Raising the Stakes, on page 292).
The GM should strive to create choice points in their campaigns by pitting two desires against one another (see also Devising Goals later in this section). This typically takes the form of the conflict between a character’s ninjō and giri, but it may also be a matter of a character’s needing to choose whether to stake honor or glory to accomplish a particular task. Other choice points stem from deciding which problem to tackle first, which possible solution to pursue, or who benefits or loses from the resolution of the problem.
When designing these choice points, the GM should plan for the immediate or short-term ramifications as part of the prep, but long-term consequences can be thought out during the preparation stage between sessions. Often, choices will come up organically during play without the GM’s having devised them first, so the GM will need to use their best judgment to determine what short-term ramifications make sense given the circumstances, building off of what was previously established instead of introducing completely new concepts. Honor and glory rewards (see pages 300 and 304) should also be taken into account in the resolution of choice points.
Providing choices between right and wrong, or good and evil, promotes a more heroic narrative and epic scale. Campaigns in which bad choices are pitted against worse choices foster a darker and grittier feel. The default mode for the Legend of the Five Rings setting exists in a middle ground, one in which players are offered different choices whose outcomes may not always be what they seem. None of these modes is particularly better or worse than any other, but each leads the player characters down a vastly different path.
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Core Rulebook · Chapter 7: The Game Master › The Role of the GM › Offering Choices and Determining Consequences · p. 282 p. 288
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If we were to offer GMs only one piece of advice for running Rokugan, it would come down to this: remember that Rokugan is a world of choice and consequence. The ninjō, giri, honor, glory, and status systems all exist to force characters to make choices and to track how those characters evolve over the course of a campaign. Players should have agency to make real decisions on behalf of their characters—that is to say, to choose the way their character wants to confront or resolve a situation—and their characters should experience the fallout of those choices, both personally and in the world around them, based on what is at stake (see Raising the Stakes, on page 292).
The GM should strive to create choice points in their campaigns by pitting two desires against one another (see also Devising Goals later in this section). This typically takes the form of the conflict between a character’s ninjō and giri, but it may also be a matter of a character’s needing to choose whether to stake honor or glory to accomplish a particular task. Other choice points stem from deciding which problem to tackle first, which possible solution to pursue, or who benefits or loses from the resolution of the problem.
When designing these choice points, the GM should plan for the immediate or short-term ramifications as part of the prep, but long-term consequences can be thought out during the preparation stage between sessions. Often, choices will come up organically during play without the GM’s having devised them first, so the GM will need to use their best judgment to determine what short-term ramifications make sense given the circumstances, building off of what was previously established instead of introducing completely new concepts. Honor and glory rewards (see pages 300 and 304) should also be taken into account in the resolution of choice points.
Providing choices between right and wrong, or good and evil, promotes a more heroic narrative and epic scale. Campaigns in which bad choices are pitted against worse choices foster a darker and grittier feel. The default mode for the Legend of the Five Rings setting exists in a middle ground, one in which players are offered different choices whose outcomes may not always be what they seem. None of these modes is particularly better or worse than any other, but each leads the player characters down a vastly different path.