Trade Skills

Trade skills are the means by which most people of the Emerald Empire make their livelihoods. These skills of the common people are looked down upon by some samurai, but they are obviously vital to the continued existence of the Empire and its ruling class.

Commerce

The Commerce skill covers the buying and selling of goods for a profit, as well as related activities. At its heart, commerce is not about negotiating for a better price (it is unseemly to give someone less than their work is worth, after all) but of knowing how to play the market to exchange more goods for less work. To operate any sort of business successfully, a character must have at least a cursory proficiency in this skill, for without it, they are sure to see their fortunes collapse.

Most samurai view money as a societal necessity, but a “dirty” one—after all, their lords provide them with the tools and equipment they require. In Rokugan, skill with money is the skill that no one values but everyone needs. Further, they see merchants as creating nothing, and so most of Rokugan puts merchants below peasants in the social order. However, in many cities, merchants are as powerful as samurai, and far wealthier.

Commerce Approaches

The Commerce skill can be used as follows with the appropriate ring:

Produce Approach (Earth Ring): Balancing accounts, storing and maintaining merchandise, moving merchandise safely.

Exchange Approach (Water Ring): Buying goods from wholesalers, finding a good deal on items and services, bartering on favorable terms, getting an item as cheaply as possible.

Innovate Approach (Fire Ring): Finding ways to make your product or service distinctive, creating new incentives for customers, inventing a new product or service, finding a new market to serve.

Con Approach (Air Ring): Convincing someone your goods are of the highest quality or best price, determining a product’s monetary value, getting as much money out of a customer as possible, assessing the competition’s progress and possible weaknesses.

Subsist Approach (Void Ring): Operating with minimal expenditures, stretching supplies as far as possible, knowing how product values will change in the future.

Labor

Shinsei spoke highly of the simple virtues of manual work, and while most samurai (and most peasants, for that matter) disagree with his glowing assessment, none can deny that society’s existence requires a great deal of backbreaking labor on somebody’s part. From farming to construction to simple ditch-digging, countless tasks must be completed for the Emerald Empire to continue functioning.

The skills in the Labor skill group are all complicated areas of expertise in their own right, even if samurai tend to look askance at them as fields of study. Farmers know a great deal of their fields, potters of their art, and smiths of metallurgy, even if they are not revered by the ruling class for the mastery they achieve. Those skilled in labor are those who know the most efficient ways of performing their duties, as well as how to effectively use the tools of their trade.

Labor Approaches

The Labor skill can be used as follows with the appropriate ring:

Produce Approach (Earth Ring): Mass-producing items, laying groundwork and foundations, maintaining tools, plowing fields, planting seeds, harvesting crops.

Exchange Approach (Water Ring): Acquiring items and tools, negotiating with tax collectors, fermenting harvested goods, cooking food.

Innovate Approach (Fire Ring): Developing tools to make your work easier, drafting new plans and designs, experimenting with new methods, creating new recipes.

Con Approach (Air Ring): Organizing the work of others on a project, covering over flaws in one’s work, disguising one sort of object as another, pretending to work.

Subsist Approach (Void Ring): Knowing how to expend minimal supplies in your work, using the natural landscape to do your work for you, knowing when to let a field lie fallow, knowing the best location to build.

Seafaring

Though many Rokugani live their whole lives without seeing the ocean, it has an enormous impact on the entire country. A great deal of Rokugan’s food and staples such as salt come from the sea. Further, despite Rokugan’s inhospitable policy toward foreigners, foreign trade does occur in numerous port cities, both under the sanction of the Empire and clandestinely.

The sailors who steer these vessels comprehend the arts of navigation, knot-tying, sail-setting, and a thousand odd jobs, and they must understand how these disparate duties fit together or risk being lost on the open seas. The Seafaring skill also handles river travel. Rivers are often the fastest roads in the Emerald Empire, and barges are a key element as travel and trade alike. Grain, tea, sake, logs, mineral wealth, and other supplies are often moved from city to city by river, or to the coast where larger ships move them to major ports. An expert seafarer can be the difference between a force arriving on time for a battle or a day behind, and keeping those armies fed.

Seafaring Approaches

The Seafaring skill can be used as follows with the appropriate ring:

Produce Approach (Earth Ring): Maintaining boats, maintaining ship logs and records, knowing facts about historical routes, knowing how long supplies will last, filtering out salt to create potable water.

Exchange Approach (Water Ring): Navigating on the ocean, knowing which routes are the fastest, determining your current location on a body of water, operating a boat.

Innovate Approach (Fire Ring): Building new boats, map-making, pioneering new routes.

Con Approach (Air Ring): Convincing someone to hire your ship instead, managing sailors during a voyage, trailing another ship without being noticed, escaping a pursuing vessel, finding signs of the passage of another ship.

Subsist Approach (Void Ring): Sensing storms before they descend, placating ocean and wind kami with sailors’ traditions.

Skulduggery

The rule of law is not absolute in the Emerald Empire, no matter how harsh the consequences for breaking the law often are. Criminal elements exist everywhere, primarily in the form of bandits and dispossessed individuals. While brigands and thieves usually turn to this path out of necessity and almost invariably struggle to survive, some criminals are tremendously successful, creating massive cartels and criminal operations that spread across numerous cities. Skulduggery also includes the craft of spies, as many of the tricks they use are similar to those of criminals. Sleight of hand, stealth, disguise, lockpicking, and trapmaking are just as important to the criminal and spymaster’s portfolio as is deception, dissembling, and misdirection.

Skulduggery Approaches

The Skulduggery skill can be used as follows with the appropriate ring:

Produce Approach (Earth Ring): Securing a location, constructing locks and other security measures, memorizing maps and codes, dividing spoils in an organized manner.

Exchange Approach (Water Ring): Finding a fence to sell stolen items to, knowing how to move freely through a city while avoiding law enforcement, determining the fastest way to break into a secure facility.

Innovate Approach (Fire Ring): Creating secret codes, creating new tools for criminal activities, concocting complex plots to slip past security measures, picking an unfamiliar lock.

Con Approach (Air Ring): Picking someone’s pocket, shadowing a mark without being noticed, organizing a group of thieves on a job, tracking someone through a city, knowing the right bribe to secure a corrupt official’s cooperation.

Subsist Approach (Void Ring): Erasing all trace of your presence, blending into a crowd, placating spirits and other supernatural beings who might punish you for your sins.

Survival

Whether this means hunting, fishing, gathering plants, or even engaging in small operations such as prospecting for ore or acquiring other valuable goods for trade, it is crucial to the survival of many people in Rokugan. Scouts and wayfinders take this a step further to be able to navigate and conceal their paths through the wilderness, as well as to cross large distances by foot or on horseback in the shortest possible amount of time. Hunting dogs and birds, riding steeds, and beasts of burden go a long way to ensure survival in the roughest of terrain and climates, and so these creatures must be properly cared for and trained.

Most samurai tend to have only a passing familiarity with this sort of subsistence living, though some clans and schools encourage their members to learn basic proficiency at survival in the wild; especially if they rule a domain far from larger cities.

Survival Approaches

The Survival skill can be used as follows with the appropriate ring:

Produce Approach (Earth Ring): Creating shelter, storing food, calming animals.

Exchange Approach (Water Ring): Foraging for food and potable water, fishing, befriending animals, cooking familiar ingredients.

Innovate Approach (Fire Ring): Finding ways to cook unfamiliar ingredients, building makeshift weapons, spurring animals to move quickly.

Con Approach (Air Ring): Making and using traps, tracking people and animals in the wild, training animals to perform new tasks (often using food as an incentive).

Subsist Approach (Void Ring): Rationing food and water, sensing natural disasters before they occur, placating mountain and forest kami.