Fantasy Core RPG: Jianghu Setting-Honor

Fantasy Core RPG
© Jerry Harris 2013
Published here as Open Game Content.
(This link will take you to the Fantasy Core Index.)

Jianghu Setting
Honor

The characters’ honor is the only distinguishing characteristic from most of the other warriors in the setting. This honor has several components:

Reputation: Honesty, bravery, and class skills
Loyalty: To those that you owe service to, not blind loyalty, must be deserving
Reciprocity: To help those who have helped you
Altruism: To help those who cannot help themselves
Justice: Combating corruption and oppression

The characters can only achieve lasting success through honorable actions. Even if you gain wealth and status through dishonorable means, you will not gain greatness, only infamy. Not only will honorable heroes be seeking your life, the law will be hounding you, and other dishonorable warriors will see you as a prime threat. You’ll have no true allies because you’re untrustworthy. Honor involves following the path of righteousness, regardless of class. A charitable, discrete assassin will be more respectable than a traitorous shaman who courts the favor of eunuch sorcerers.

Honorable characters aren’t in it for the money (even thieves), often it is only a pretext to get involved and to keep themselves fed. So, honorable characters may well be monetarily poor, but their honorable actions should ensure that they will always be taken care of by those they have helped or simply by their reputation. Dishonorable characters are shunned when in need.

Scenarios will not doubt involve combat and possible monetary gain, but the focus of any Jianghu adventure should be putting the characters’ ideals into practice and even into conflict with one another (such as repaying a stranger’s kindness at the expense of your employer’s orders). Players should be processing any given game situation not in terms of leveling up and gaining treasure, but how it effects their honor and perceived reputation. Any other consideration should be secondary.

As a Ref, it should be about presenting difficult choices to the players and letting them choose their course of action and deal with the consequences. The sooner the players figure out that ALL of the NPC’s in the setting are holding grudges and keeping score, the better. Just like their characters, no rules-based “carrots” can really motivate the players. They will have to agree to playing with a certain mind-set to get the most out of it.

Here are two techniques to bring out a character’s values.

The Haunting Choice: Whatever the characters do, it will have consequences. Siding with one side, makes an enemy of another. Your actions create your reputation and thus how others deal with you. Taking on a job or accepting another’s aid, creates an obligation. Taking an action that creates a greater problem means having to clean up your messes. Known (or later discovered) acts by the characters will follow them around.

The Call Out: Whether a haughty challenge, an impassioned plea, or an intellectual appeal, an NPC will call out some aspect of the characters’ honor to prompt them into action. The character is not under obligation to respond with the desired action, but must answer in some fashion. For example, your experienced warrior is challenged to a fight a young inexperienced kung-fu hot-head only so he can prove his worth. Honor dictates this would not be a fair or worthy fight. The character may choose to respond with icy silence, a cruel put down, or even an invitation to friendship and training. If hot-head returns with a hostage and demands a fight, then it’s on (cleaning up your messes).

These (and whatever your techniques you might come up with) should not be used constantly during an adventure session. Probably no more than once or twice. Further, not all choices in an adventure should be morally difficult (of course they can still be of practical difficulty). Again, just once or twice, not a constant stream of ethical dilemmas between equally bad choices. If you’re torturing the players like it’s a retelling of Sophie’s Choice, you’re doing it wrong. This is a game of action, decisively making the honorable choice and following it through.