One domain = the best?

[NRP]

There's an argument going on over at RPG.net:

http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?p=1 ... st10176853

Basically, the question is this: is there any mechanical benefit to spreading your lands out rather than "turtling up" all your benefits in one place?

[Arcmagik]

Yeah. You are totally screwed if you go to war and lose your single domain, no more house for you!

[Irontruth]

Yeah. You are totally screwed if you go to war and lose your single domain, no more house for you!

If you read the rules on "consequences" of warfare, the loser loses all of their lands, not just where the battle was fought.

Barring a crushing defeat though, I would probably rule it that you only lose lands your enemy prevents you from accessing. Ie, sieging your one castle and occuping your surrounding lands gives the seiger access to the lands as the "victor" in this case.

[AdvocateJack]

If you read the rules on "consequences" of warfare, the loser loses all of their lands, not just where the battle was fought.

As one of the guys who was arguing about this I'm now curious. Do you have a cite for that? Because under resolution and consequences (p. 182-183) it says you lose the "lands held by the defeated force". Which could be all the lands I suppose, but since it references the consequence of a battle I read that as meaning that you lost the lands which the defeated force was defending/holding. Thus if you lose a battle on your Grassy Plains you lose the Plains, but not the adjacent Hilly Forest because the battle wasn't "held" by those forces. The text that follows that seems to suggest that the house can lose and not lose it's other domains.

Is there some other part I'm missing?

In any event, that could probably stand to be clarified but I admit my reading makes the most sense to me.

[Irontruth]

Hmm... on another reading, it is rather vague. "Held by the defeated force" can be rather subjective.

Well, at least the book isn't as bad as the L5R main book.

[Talassa]

If you read the rules on "consequences" of warfare, the loser loses all of their lands, not just where the battle was fought.

As one of the guys who was arguing about this I'm now curious. Do you have a cite for that? Because under resolution and consequences (p. 182-183) it says you lose the "lands held by the defeated force". Which could be all the lands I suppose, but since it references the consequence of a battle I read that as meaning that you lost the lands which the defeated force was defending/holding. Thus if you lose a battle on your Grassy Plains you lose the Plains, but not the adjacent Hilly Forest because the battle wasn't "held" by those forces. The text that follows that seems to suggest that the house can lose and not lose it's other domains.

Is there some other part I'm missing?

In any event, that could probably stand to be clarified but I admit my reading makes the most sense to me.

I agree entirely with you.

The thing is that when interpreting any RPG text you need to apply some healthy dose of common sense.

Then you must use that common sense when applying the rules to the fiction is being created at the table.

When your players loose a battle, just do what makes sense in the story – losing a battle with a host of mad dotharki riders that are just passing by in a coast-to-coast rampage will have different consequences than losing a battle with Lord Tywin’s forces.

There is no way that I could read the abovementioned text as to forfeit all my player’s lands in case they were to lose the first minor skirmish to a local bandit’s force, for instance.