The Legendary not-an-oiran, Shizuka

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Moshi Shizuka
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The Legendary not-an-oiran, Shizuka

Post by Moshi Shizuka » Mon Sep 13, 2021 1:05 pm

Fire away! :D
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Kitsu Murato
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Re: The Legendary not-an-oiran, Shizuka

Post by Kitsu Murato » Mon Sep 13, 2021 1:13 pm

*adds fire*

If only, time zones. I liked Shizuka and in particular I loved hearing Raizo talk about her like she was crazy but finding her to be quite reasonable and lovely himself. Curious if she had such drastically differences in personality between the two or if their views of her were just simply that different because of their own perspectives.
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Saibankan
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Re: The Legendary not-an-oiran, Shizuka

Post by Saibankan » Mon Sep 13, 2021 8:31 pm

What's one thing that you feel the game handled really well?

What's one thing (outside of dueling and strife) that you feels needs to be changed before the next game?
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Seppun Yuzu
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Re: The Legendary not-an-oiran, Shizuka

Post by Seppun Yuzu » Mon Sep 13, 2021 8:45 pm

Shizuka was cool. Sadly not many threads. Will you replay her?
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Shiba Raizo
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Re: The Legendary not-an-oiran, Shizuka

Post by Shiba Raizo » Mon Sep 13, 2021 8:49 pm

My nemesis! :lol:

I actually loved our characters' interactions about as much as Raizo hated them, but since he hated them (and your time was limited) I didn't badger you for more after the second one, since I couldn't see either of them doing anything but actively avoid one another.

ANYWAY!

Stock questions:

Biggest surprise the game threw you?

Biggest "damn, I wish I'd done that differently" moment?

Favorite scene?

Had time zones, time, and everything else allowed for a more active presence, what would you have had Shizuka get up to?

EDIT: Also, just FYI, in hindsight, his second conversation with Shizuka actually helped underpin some of his end-game decision- since what he saw as her insanity he blamed on the role and expectations thrust upon her, which got him thinking about his own situation
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Moshi Shizuka
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Re: The Legendary not-an-oiran, Shizuka

Post by Moshi Shizuka » Mon Sep 13, 2021 10:52 pm

Kitsu Murato wrote:
Mon Sep 13, 2021 1:13 pm
*adds fire*

If only, time zones. I liked Shizuka and in particular I loved hearing Raizo talk about her like she was crazy but finding her to be quite reasonable and lovely himself. Curious if she had such drastically differences in personality between the two or if their views of her were just simply that different because of their own perspectives.
Well, the Shizuka that people got was not necessarily her real personality. There was this whole delinquency/bad girl side to Shizuka that I just did not get around to exploring or really doing anything with which was a tremendous waste of potential. That I tried to implement it as late as the chat with Raizo is probably what led to this kind of personality disparity that was observed; who she was shifted so much from day 0 to day 5 as I tried to wring a coherent character out of elements of her personality that I chopped off to fit my posting schedule.

It was kind of a mess, to be honest. I ended up defaulting to the Shizuka that people ended up liking the most: that of the saucy, risque (but in a PG-13 sort of way) oiran-priestess.

So to answer your questions, it wasn't so much perspective of different people, I think. Everyone saw the Shizuka that was on offer: it's just the her that was on offer changed so radically as time went by.
Saibankan wrote:
Mon Sep 13, 2021 8:31 pm
What's one thing that you feel the game handled really well?

What's one thing (outside of dueling and strife) that you feels needs to be changed before the next game?
I thought the game handled well the whole hand-holding aspect needed to ease, en masse, a group of new people into L5R 5e. I really did appreciate that aspect of things as it started off with events that got the basics in place and then introduced the concepts of different success thresholds for different approaches and things to do with Opportunities and was generally a pretty great primer for 5e moving forward if more games are run on that system.

More cooperative events would be nice for future games as I don't feel the Assistance mechanic was even visited upon in this game in a formalized event. Further, I had this vibe that the tabletop game kind of assumed that different party members would cover for shortfalls in other party members' builds in their groups and that by having a lot of individual focus (in part because of the nature of forum games), it leaves more focused characters high and dry? That was my feeling on things, anyway.
Seppun Yuzu wrote:
Mon Sep 13, 2021 8:45 pm
Shizuka was cool. Sadly not many threads. Will you replay her?
At this time, unfortunately, I don't think I will. In the end, Shizuka felt really half-baked to me and I'm not seeing a path forward in her development in terms of a character narrative or mechanically and I'd rather not try to drive a square peg into a round hole.
Shiba Raizo wrote:
Mon Sep 13, 2021 8:49 pm
My nemesis! :lol:

I actually loved our characters' interactions about as much as Raizo hated them, but since he hated them (and your time was limited) I didn't badger you for more after the second one, since I couldn't see either of them doing anything but actively avoid one another.

ANYWAY!

Stock questions:

Biggest surprise the game threw you?

Biggest "damn, I wish I'd done that differently" moment?

Favorite scene?

Had time zones, time, and everything else allowed for a more active presence, what would you have had Shizuka get up to?
I enjoyed our interaction together! Raizo was Shizuka's best enemy and the only one to almost make her drop her mask of being the happy/seductive oiran-priestess and let her angry, delinquent side out.

I was surprised at how well Shizuka did at some events while completely doing mediocre or failing at events where I felt her strengths were. A lot of that is, of course, dice luck but it was amplified by me not having as solid a grasp of 5e mechanics as yet (and there not being a probabilities website for 5e as there was for 4e which, I admit, I have come to rely upon as a crutch).

I regret not keeping Shizuka a Scorpion. I think it would have allowed her more freedom of action, because I ended up trying to serve two masters with her concept by the end: that of being a good Moshi while also going with the concept I wanted to drive her towards. I got a sense that people enjoyed the contrast but it felt at times like I was watering things down, but that was just me.

In terms of favorite scene, it would have to be a toss-up between the meeting with Raizo and the concurrently-running scene with Ishioka. The disparity in tone from one scene to the next set up a kind of whiplash that drew into sharp detail how I was trying to deliver two different tones with the same character. Good as a personal character study and as an abject lesson in what not to do with my characters in the future.

There was a lot left on the table with Shizuka in terms of debauchery. I'm not even going to lament not being in on the whole spiritual investigation stuff, others led off on that event and worked it hard and they deserve it for what they did and I wasn't going to horn in on. I did not, at all, follow-up on Shizuka supposedly being this precocious musician because the dice ended up not supporting it. Others were throwing just as much or even higher dice pools and her results weren't panning out. There was opportunity to have expanded on how she would react to that frustration and failure but roleplaying someone frustrated from setbacks was not some art-imitating-life thing I wanted to do at the time! :P
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Honor: 60 | Glory: 45 | Status: 30
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