8. what does your character think of bushidō?
Texto
Everyone who lives or travels within Rokugan must decide how they feel about the core of its society: Bushidō. The tenets and teachings of Bushidō encompass all that samurai do—and it is difficult, if not impossible, to do anything within the Emerald Empire without being affected, at least tangentially, by the samurai class. Though peasants are not expected to adhere to Bushidō in most contexts, and rōnin are in a strange position of being samurai with none of the inherent benefits, each should understand what Bushidō is enough to have feelings about it.
However, this may not be true for gaijin characters. Someone who has just arrived in Rokugan may know very little about its culture, which puts them at a big disadvantage. Still, it is more likely that a gaijin visitor would be somewhat versed in the ways of the Empire—at least enough to know how to avoid an untimely death.
All Who Walk in Rokugan
Whether you are playing a character from the Emerald Empire or a gaijin from a faraway place, stories set in Rokugan work best if you to decide how your character feels about Bushidō and the other primary aspects of the Empire’s culture.
Table 2–2: Sample Ninjō
ROLL | NINJŌ | DESCRIPTION
01–04 | Achieve Mastery
Whether at swordplay, art, calligraphy, poetry, or even butchery, you seek to be the best through constant challenges. You may, however, settle for merely being seen as the best.
05–08 | Amass Followers
You claim to be a bandit leader, crime lord, or head of a heretical cult. You may actually be charismatic or have an elitist or populist message, but you still need an audience to appreciate you.
09–13 | Assist the Spirits
While others deal with the corporeal, your concern lies with the spiritual. Plenty of spirits are lost, abused by humans, or unmoored from where they belong, and they require compassion.
14–18 | Atonement | You did a great wrong and must make up for it. Your guilt drives you, as does the belief that your death can’t correct the mistake: only your actions can.
19–23 | Construct a Great Work
24–28 | Discover a Family Heritage
You are driven to construct a masterwork, whether a gate, sculpture, painting, text, or shrine. You need the best materials, ideal location, and perfect inspiration, however, to make your magnum opus last the ages.
Your family has lost a claim to greatness. You must find it. It could be a lineage scroll, an ancient relic, or a piece of art or architecture.
29–33 | Enact Justice | The Celestial Order has been disrupted. You intend to embody justice by exposing a vicious secret, revealing evidence of a crime, or getting a criminal to confess.
34–38 | Establish a Family | You want to begin a grand lineage. Love in this case is secondary, but your partner, or partners, must share your goal for this family to be strong and united.
39–43 | Find a Lord to Serve
44–48 | Find a Sensei
You wish to do what many rōnin long to forqqfind a lord, a house, and a place where you belong. You wish to regain a status you once lost, improve your station, or integrate into a foreign society as fully as you are able.
To study under the great masters is the path to becoming a great master yourself, and a sensei’s recognition of your potential is the greatest compliment. For those less scrupulous, this also means benefiting from a sensei’s reputation.
49–53 | Find True Love | Love may be a frivolous emotion, but it brings you happiness. The world scoffs at such trivialities, making true love rare, but rarity makes it all the more valuable.
54–58 | Gain Mystical Power
You want the power to change the world—reality itself—through legitimate study or as a mahō-tsukai, a blood magic practitioner. You might obtain this power through ancient knowledge, bargaining with a spirit, or supernatural insight from kami or kansen.
59–63 | Kill Monsters
Demons cause misery and weaken society. They may also have caused harm to you or your loved ones. You must destroy these spirits of corruption, both for your own sake and for the sake of the world.
64–68 | Regain Your Home
Perhaps you have traveled far from your homeland and have since lost your way, or maybe your home was destroyed by a natural event, a supernatural creature, or an angry noble. Whatever it was, your home is gone, and you desperately wish to return to or rebuild it.
69–73 | Personal Security
Be it a parcel of land, money to buy your way into a more secure living situation, or a financial stipend, you want some reliable material resource to ensure that you and your family have a future.
74–78 | Recover a Relic
History is a story, and stories carry power. A relic holds all three, connecting you to the past. The relic you strive to recover—whether it has cultural, monetary, or spiritual power—can grant you a future.
79–83 | Build a Reputation You want your reputation to spread throughout Rokugan, to samurai and heimin alike. Perhaps with a little inspiration, your deeds will be written into history.
84–88 | Tame a Great Beast
89–93 | Uncover a Conspiracy
Terrifying creatures roam Rokugan. They harass farmers and hunters and disrupt the order of life. Only you can end this threat, by taming it, but there is always another one in the next forest.
Whispers in the shadows and behind walls hint of a plot to overthrow or murder those in power. Friends may be foes, and trust is a rare commodity. You walk in those same shadows to bring the conspirators into the light.
94–100 Wreak Vengeance | A villain has wronged you or someone you care about. The wrongdoer may or may not know or remember you. You have pledged something worse than death for them.
If you are playing a foreign character, you might choose to think about Bushidō’s tenets as a guideline for thinking about core values of your character’s home country. The tenets cover a wide range of values, and though your character may not believe in Bushidō, they do believe in something.
The Tenets of Bushidō
Like the Great Clans, individuals and cultures place different levels of emphasis on various tenets and values. To represent the individuality and nuances of your character’s personal beliefs, choose one tenet of Bushidō as paramount and one tenet as less significant (see The Clanso Views of BWshidō, page 301 of the core rulebook, for more information). Then, choose one of the following options:
Your dedication to Bushidō affects all that you do. If your character’s belief in living an orthodox interpretation of Bushidō is very staunch, gain +10 honor.
If your character’s values diverge from some or all of the common values of Bushidō, gain one item of rarity 5 or lower to represent a time when that divergence both benefited your character and pulled them further from the true path.
You know little about Bushidō and its significance to Rokugani culture. Your ignorance will be short-lived, however, because you will either learn quickly or meet your end at the hand of an angered samurai. Gain 1 rank in one of the following skills to represent your ignorance of Bushidō: Commerce, Labor, Medicine, Seafaring, Skulduggery, or Survival.
Texto do livro
Path of Waves – The Essential Guide to Rōnin · Chapter 2: Creating a Character › Part III: The Past and the Future › 8. What does yourcharacter think of Bushidō? · p. 60 p. 62 p. 63 p. 64
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Everyone who lives or travels within Rokugan must decide how they feel about the core of its society: Bushidō. The tenets and teachings of Bushidō encompass all that samurai do—and it is difficult, if not impossible, to do anything within the Emerald Empire without being affected, at least tangentially, by the samurai class. Though peasants are not expected to adhere to Bushidō in most contexts, and rōnin are in a strange position of being samurai with none of the inherent benefits, each should understand what Bushidō is enough to have feelings about it.
However, this may not be true for gaijin characters. Someone who has just arrived in Rokugan may know very little about its culture, which puts them at a big disadvantage. Still, it is more likely that a gaijin visitor would be somewhat versed in the ways of the Empire—at least enough to know how to avoid an untimely death.
All Who Walk in Rokugan
Whether you are playing a character from the Emerald Empire or a gaijin from a faraway place, stories set in Rokugan work best if you to decide how your character feels about Bushidō and the other primary aspects of the Empire’s culture.
Table 2–2: Sample Ninjō
ROLL | NINJŌ | DESCRIPTION
01–04 | Achieve Mastery
Whether at swordplay, art, calligraphy, poetry, or even butchery, you seek to be the best through constant challenges. You may, however, settle for merely being seen as the best.
05–08 | Amass Followers
You claim to be a bandit leader, crime lord, or head of a heretical cult. You may actually be charismatic or have an elitist or populist message, but you still need an audience to appreciate you.
09–13 | Assist the Spirits
While others deal with the corporeal, your concern lies with the spiritual. Plenty of spirits are lost, abused by humans, or unmoored from where they belong, and they require compassion.
14–18 | Atonement | You did a great wrong and must make up for it. Your guilt drives you, as does the belief that your death can’t correct the mistake: only your actions can.
19–23 | Construct a Great Work
24–28 | Discover a Family Heritage
You are driven to construct a masterwork, whether a gate, sculpture, painting, text, or shrine. You need the best materials, ideal location, and perfect inspiration, however, to make your magnum opus last the ages.
Your family has lost a claim to greatness. You must find it. It could be a lineage scroll, an ancient relic, or a piece of art or architecture.
29–33 | Enact Justice | The Celestial Order has been disrupted. You intend to embody justice by exposing a vicious secret, revealing evidence of a crime, or getting a criminal to confess.
34–38 | Establish a Family | You want to begin a grand lineage. Love in this case is secondary, but your partner, or partners, must share your goal for this family to be strong and united.
39–43 | Find a Lord to Serve
44–48 | Find a Sensei
You wish to do what many rōnin long to forqqfind a lord, a house, and a place where you belong. You wish to regain a status you once lost, improve your station, or integrate into a foreign society as fully as you are able.
To study under the great masters is the path to becoming a great master yourself, and a sensei’s recognition of your potential is the greatest compliment. For those less scrupulous, this also means benefiting from a sensei’s reputation.
49–53 | Find True Love | Love may be a frivolous emotion, but it brings you happiness. The world scoffs at such trivialities, making true love rare, but rarity makes it all the more valuable.
54–58 | Gain Mystical Power
You want the power to change the world—reality itself—through legitimate study or as a mahō-tsukai, a blood magic practitioner. You might obtain this power through ancient knowledge, bargaining with a spirit, or supernatural insight from kami or kansen.
59–63 | Kill Monsters
Demons cause misery and weaken society. They may also have caused harm to you or your loved ones. You must destroy these spirits of corruption, both for your own sake and for the sake of the world.
64–68 | Regain Your Home
Perhaps you have traveled far from your homeland and have since lost your way, or maybe your home was destroyed by a natural event, a supernatural creature, or an angry noble. Whatever it was, your home is gone, and you desperately wish to return to or rebuild it.
69–73 | Personal Security
Be it a parcel of land, money to buy your way into a more secure living situation, or a financial stipend, you want some reliable material resource to ensure that you and your family have a future.
74–78 | Recover a Relic
History is a story, and stories carry power. A relic holds all three, connecting you to the past. The relic you strive to recover—whether it has cultural, monetary, or spiritual power—can grant you a future.
79–83 | Build a Reputation You want your reputation to spread throughout Rokugan, to samurai and heimin alike. Perhaps with a little inspiration, your deeds will be written into history.
84–88 | Tame a Great Beast
89–93 | Uncover a Conspiracy
Terrifying creatures roam Rokugan. They harass farmers and hunters and disrupt the order of life. Only you can end this threat, by taming it, but there is always another one in the next forest.
Whispers in the shadows and behind walls hint of a plot to overthrow or murder those in power. Friends may be foes, and trust is a rare commodity. You walk in those same shadows to bring the conspirators into the light.
94–100 Wreak Vengeance | A villain has wronged you or someone you care about. The wrongdoer may or may not know or remember you. You have pledged something worse than death for them.
If you are playing a foreign character, you might choose to think about Bushidō’s tenets as a guideline for thinking about core values of your character’s home country. The tenets cover a wide range of values, and though your character may not believe in Bushidō, they do believe in something.
The Tenets of Bushidō
Like the Great Clans, individuals and cultures place different levels of emphasis on various tenets and values. To represent the individuality and nuances of your character’s personal beliefs, choose one tenet of Bushidō as paramount and one tenet as less significant (see The Clanso Views of BWshidō, page 301 of the core rulebook, for more information). Then, choose one of the following options:
Your dedication to Bushidō affects all that you do. If your character’s belief in living an orthodox interpretation of Bushidō is very staunch, gain +10 honor.
If your character’s values diverge from some or all of the common values of Bushidō, gain one item of rarity 5 or lower to represent a time when that divergence both benefited your character and pulled them further from the true path.
You know little about Bushidō and its significance to Rokugani culture. Your ignorance will be short-lived, however, because you will either learn quickly or meet your end at the hand of an angered samurai. Gain 1 rank in one of the following skills to represent your ignorance of Bushidō: Commerce, Labor, Medicine, Seafaring, Skulduggery, or Survival.