Oolite Bulletins

Yes, only a selection of the highest-tech feudal systems in a given galaxy actually have a royal house; which ones are described in the pdf readme.

So, I've been working on a Japanese theme but I've hit a few issues. I like to think I'm pretty well-read but I admit I'm not that knowledgeable about oriental language and history and I've been trying to base this OXP on fact.

After looking for info on the web I thought I'd make use of the kazoku ranks established under the Meiji Restoration, which I'm reliabliy informed were based on the British House of Lords and so have 5 ranks equivalent to those found in Europe, from Baron to Duke - this fits neatly into the rank generator I'm already using for the OXP. Trouble is, in all the references I've seen, the English translation koshaku is used for both for a Duke and a Marquess, although the kanji terms are different (公爵 for a Duke, 侯爵 for a Marquess). It's a long shot, but does anyone know if there's a way of differentiating between the two in English? It would be awfully bad form to confuse a Duke with a Marquess! An alternative could be to use one of the Emperor ranks in place of a Duke.

Also, The Feudal States is an equal opportunities OXP so both males and females can hold ranks. I've already got lists of popular names, however I haven't had much like in finding the feminine variations of these Japanese ranks - it's possible there weren't any under their peerage rules but if anyone knows different, or if there's a simple way of feminising them, it would be useful to know.

You could maybe use "Daimyo" for "Duke": it's not exactly historically accurate but then neither is putting them in space, so ... "Daimyo" (as I understand it) was the pre-Meiji generic term for powerful lords – sort of the equivalent of the old pre-Norman "Earl", and so could be regarded as the top rank below the crown.

Mauiby de Fug wrote:

The lodges only appear in systems belonging to a royal house, if I remember correctly. They are marked on the Advanced Space Compass by "F".

Went through the pdf file for the 4th or 5th time, and finally realized the pages with the pretty heraldry symbols contained the Galaxy and Systems with the Lodges. I originally thought they were just decoration.

Hmm, Earl is already covered by Hakushaku.

Unfortunately, in Japanese, Marquess & Duke ( & Prince) are covered by the catch-all Koshaku, hovever the title Taikun (Great Prince / Grand Duke) was taken by the Tokugawa Shoguns (emperors in all but name up to the time of the restoration - so the title sits just below Emperor, and above all other titles) & was in formal use up to two years after Emperor Meiji came to power, until the following announcement:

"The Emperor of Japan announces to the sovereigns of all foreign countries and to their subjects that permission has been granted to the Shogun Tokugawa Yoshinobu to return the governing power in accordance with his own request. We shall henceforward exercise supreme authority in all the internal and external affairs of the country. Consequently the title of Emperor must be substituted for that of Taikun, in which the treaties have been made. Officers are being appointed by us to the conduct of foreign affairs. It is desirable that the representatives of the treaty powers recognize this announcement."

– January 3, 1869

So the following, while still not that historically accurate, would definitely provide a distinctive 5 tier neo-feudal system, and one that should hopefully make sense to Japanese speakers too:

Taikun - Prince
Koshaku - Duke/Marquess
Hakushaku - Earl/Count
Shishaku - Viscount
Danshaku - Baron

Kaks wrote:

Hmm, Earl is already covered by Hakushaku.

Unfortunately, in Japanese, Marquess & Duke ( & Prince) are covered by the catch-all Koshaku, hovever the title Taikun (Great Prince / Grand Duke) was taken by the Tokugawa Shoguns (emperors in all but name up to the time of the restoration - so the title sits just below Emperor, and above all other titles) & was in formal use up to two years after Emperor Meiji came to power, until the following announcement:

"The Emperor of Japan announces to the sovereigns of all foreign countries and to their subjects that permission has been granted to the Shogun Tokugawa Yoshinobu to return the governing power in accordance with his own request. We shall henceforward exercise supreme authority in all the internal and external affairs of the country. Consequently the title of Emperor must be substituted for that of Taikun, in which the treaties have been made. Officers are being appointed by us to the conduct of foreign affairs. It is desirable that the representatives of the treaty powers recognize this announcement."

– January 3, 1869

So the following, while still not that historically accurate, would definitely provide a distinctive 5 tier neo-feudal system, and one that should hopefully make sense to Japanese speakers too:

Taikun - Prince
Koshaku - Duke/Marquess
Hakushaku - Earl/Count
Shishaku - Viscount
Danshaku - Baron

Hi, native Japanese speaker here. These words seem more or less technically the right translations for the positions you have, but if I remember correctly they are actually words that Japanese people would use to describe European nobility, and not often used by Japanese people to describe Japanese nobility. But I don't know what you're going for—a simple translation of the words that you have, or positions loosely based on the Japanese system of feudalism?

I admit my Japanese history is not that strong, but if you want your system to be based on Japanese feudalism, you should look at the Edo period or earlier and not at the Meiji period, as the Meiji Restoration did away with the Japanese feudal system in favor of a monarchy at the hands of the emperor.

You might want to use "Shogun" for the top position; the Shogun, though, is THE head honcho of the whole Japanese feudal system (pretty much one Shogun for all of Japan), and I don't know whether your OXP has the player rising that highly in power, as I just came across it very recently.

A step lower than Shogun might be "Daimyo," as Disembodied suggested, which, among a bunch of meanings, signified the top leaders of the factions in the Warring States period, or the title given to heads of military houses owning above a certain amount of land in the Edo period.

In contrast to Daimyo is the Shomyo, which basically translates to "small name" whereas Daimyo means "great name." According to the Japanese Wikipedia, "Shomyo" was occasionally used for castle lords who didn't have enough power to rule an entire state, although the term usually means any samurai who just didn't get famous enough to be called a daimyo. So you might be able to shoehorn that into one of the lower ranks.

Besides Shogun, Daimyo, and Shomyo, though, I don't really know what other terms are available. You might consider positions like Kampaku, a regent to the Emperor, or Busho, a generic term for general, though these are all subsets of Daimyo, which really means no more than "samurai who got famous," anyway. There are probably positions that fall between generals and your ordinary rank-and-file samurai, but I'd have to do more research on the Japanese Wikipedia to find that out.

So I might have made things even more confusing, but I hope this helped. : )

Edit: I thought that was Ramirez I was quoting, oops.

Thanks for the info, Black Albatross!

While still not Ramirez, I suspect he originally looked at the Meiji titles since they looked - by and large - like the simpler option!


However, if we had 'proper' titles, possibly excluding Shogun, that would be great!
Do let us know if you find them - 4 distinct levels of Daimyo, plus Shomyo for the lowest rank should do the trick!

Mind you, if it gets too obscure - I'm thinking of words like vavasour in english ( a perfectly good medieval word meaning vassal of a vassal, but a word very few people even know exists ) it might be stretching historical accuracy a bit too far!

Dropping by again. I have only a small amount of experience with the Japanese language or Japan's history, although I'm pretty good on research usually. I'll just try to complement what has already been said.

On page 206 of this book (which has, translated, "The Laws of Military Households, 1615"), they mention the Daimyo (aforementioned via Black Albatross), the Shomyo (aforementioned via Black Albatross), and the finally the Kyunin, the latter apparently being a third level of nobility in this document. They are defined as those individuals who hold land under Shomyo. (look at 2.4 for the specific instance)

Another page, here, describes the Kyunin as "nobles of the military class", and includes the Daimyo and Samurai as sub-classes of them. Since the 1615 document, which is of the historical period, seems to strongly distinguish between Daimyo and Kyunin, I'm pretty sure that Daimyo is not a subclass of Kyunin.

Kyunin, the best I can synthesize, is a noble who owns land but is under a Shomyo in rank. Since this source describe Kyunin and Samurai as two different things, that would lead me to believe that they are two different ranks. So unless other information comes to light, I would think that given that they were mentioned in 2.4 of the first source, along with nobles that we definitely know are better than Samurai, and that the Samurai were not explicitly mentioned, that Kyunin are a step below Shomyo but above Samurai.

I think it would be difficult to create a Japanese rank structure similar to the what could be found European feudal states, but I could give it a shot using these two sources. The second site does say that that lesser-ranked warriors, in particular during the Sengoku period, could gain rank through military endeavors and become nobles. Toyotomi Hideyoshi is used as an example of a peasant who ascended from (functionally) a Chugen, into the Daimyo who succeeded Nobunaga Oda (after rather a lot of effort on his part). Of course this a somewhat extraordinary example, but there is a precedent never the less.

I'm pretty sure that it wouldn't be 100% percent historically accurate, but it'd be close enough for most casual players and it would not require a lot of scripting to implement. You could of course modify the rank system to accommodate these particular feudal states for more accurate results.

Knight
\-> Chugen: A new member of a Japanese military clan. After they gain some experience, perform duties and buy good equipment for their spacecraft, they can be promoted to higher ranks.

Baron
\-> Gashira: Gashira lead small numbers of troops, generally Chugen or Ashigaru (peasant-warriors local to the Shogun's system), into battle. Both nobles and peasants can become Gashira, and for the latter this rank allows ordinary people to become nobles. As such some are part of the nobility, however, small land holdings among Gashira are not uncommon.

Viscount
\-> Samurai: Perhaps the most famous rank outside of the Japanese culture, Samurai are noble-warriors and lead many teams of Gashira, Ashigaru and Chugen into medium to large battles. They themselves are led by Kyunin, Shomyo, or Daimyo. They have some administrative dutes, and typically have a fair amount of wealth and land at their disposal. Again, if they distinguish themselves in battle, they can become part of the higher eshelons of nobility.

Earl
\-> Kyunin: Kyunin are noble-officers, a middle rank in the feudal structure but still not nearly as powerful as Shomyo or Daimyo. They typically are regarded as competent warriors, and are also able administrators. A Kyunin who has "risen through the ranks" typically has a quite a bit of land and capital by this point. They are typicially under a Shomyo's command. Again, they can advance in rank if they distinguish themselves.

Marquess
\-> Shomyo: The Shomyo of a Shogunate are very powerful. Though they are not as mighty as a Daimyo or Shogun, they generally have lots of land and responsibilities in comparison to the previous ranks, and control many Kyunin, Samurai, and lesser soldiers. They, however, report to their Daimyo.

Duke
\-> Daimyo: A Daimyo is comparable to a Duke or a General. In fact, they frequently must perform both administrative and martial duties in service to the Shogun, the only official they need report to. Daimyo have signifigant land holdings, and in the Oolite universe this remains the case. In fact some of these warriors have conqured whole star systems, though typical targets tend to be weaker population centers which can't afford to have hi-tech, dedicated ships (much less the Galactic Navy) to protect themselves.

King
\-> Shogun: This warlord rules over an entire planetary system, or Shogunate. Unlike feudal Japan, there are many Shogunates at once in the Oolite universe, each ruling over a major Feudal-class system in Galaxy ?. If it has a Royal Lodge, the system is a particularly strong Shogun's seat of power. Feudal systems of lesser wealth and influence may be ruled by a weak Shogun or in some cases a powerful Daimyo. All these Shogun are constantly feuding with each other to acquire each other's territory.

(again, I could be totally wrong about everything here, but this is what I could find with a few hours of research; in any event, it might help lead to more accurate conclusions if the analysis here is incorrect)

LordHaHa

I think that's about as good as we can get it without digging around for even more obscure terms, and seems good enough to convince anybody that the guy making the OXP did a bit of research instead of slapping some pseudo-Japanese words on it and hoping no Japanese speakers would play it.

One thing I might do, though, is replace Chugen with Ashigaru. It seems from LordHaha's link that Chugen comprised the lowest possible rung of the Japanese military hierarchy, inferior even to the Ashigaru, the peasant foot-soldiers who made up the rank-and-file of the typical feudal Japanese army. So based on that, I'd say Chugen would be a more appropriate term for the not-yet-nobles who are running simple delivery missions in hope of joining a feudal house (if they get titles at all), while Ashigaru would be the newly-recruited nobles who get to join in the clan's military operations.

And ideally I would say that Samurai, being the most basic noble rank, is the closest analogue for Knight (Chugen and Ashigaru are both non-nobles, after all), but since I can't find terms to fill up the gap up to Kyunin I won't argue the point too much. Maybe put Samurai for Knight, have the Gashira stand for Baron still, and then we'd only need one extra rank for Viscount?

In any case, any kind of group claiming to bring back the old Japanese feudal system into interstellar space would be making more than a few things up anyway, so I'd say we don't have to worry too hard about it.

Thanks for the vote of confidence! Switching around Chugen wouldn't be a problem, although the description of it as a military go-pher sounds pretty close to the missions lower nobility get in other Feudal states, and there were nobles who were of that rank during their early training. But it honestly does fit better as a pre-Knight rank (although you don't have a rank before Knight, so you wouldn't know you were Chugen unless it was reflected in the Royal Court "Do you wanna be a Knight?" dialogue for the Asian houses).

BTW, I finally found out what Kyunin are. On link 3 of that post from earlier, I searched for the word "Kyunin" and sorted the search by page, which revealed additional sections of the book. On page 34 it describes Kyunin as "landed retainers". Sounds like lower-end general nobility. There was also a Daikan rank in there that I thought could be used as a rank between Kyunin and Shomyo (and thus we could start ranking at Gashira, which sounds much more reasonable than Chugen), but it turns out that Daikan were just tax collectors. Even so, they still had quite a bit of power, although it doesn't fit in with a military ranking very well.

LordHaHa

Thanks people - good to see the wisdom of the crowd in action! So it seems the best compromise to give the right kind of Japanese flavour would be Gashira, Daikan, Kyunin, Shomyo, Daimyo and then possibly Shogun. I'd better get scripting...

On a different note, when missiles are removed at the hunting lodge before a combat trial, are they supposed to be replaced after the contest? My last visit would have been a tad expensive if I hadn't had a 10,000CR bet on myself . . .

Just belatedly getting into this OXP, looks like a really great piece of work, but I'm a bit apprehensive about risking another Q-bomb in there so I guess I need to go and use it first . . . .

Ian.

No, at the moment any missiles removed before the contest aren't replaced afterwards. Remember, once you've accepted a challenge you can still go to the equipment store and sell any pylon-mounted equipment before launching into a challenge.

Ramirez wrote:

Thanks people - good to see the wisdom of the crowd in action! So it seems the best compromise to give the right kind of Japanese flavour would be Gashira, Daikan, Kyunin, Shomyo, Daimyo and then possibly Shogun. I'd better get scripting...

Actually, I think LordHaha was suggesting Chugen, Gashira, Samurai (gotta put that in somewhere), Kyunin, Shomyo, Daimyo, then Shogun. Daikan was omitted because it was a tax-collecting position and not really a military rank.

After a bit of thought, I'd suggest switching Samurai and Gashira, so that it goes Chugen, Samurai, Gashira, Kyunin, Shomyo, Daimyo, and Shogun. Gashira is just derived from "kashira," a Japanese word for the head, and so is just a generic term for "leader," whereas (from my understanding as a native speaker of Japanese) nothing about the word "samurai" in itself implies any kind of leadership. So in a purely language-based sense (leaving aside historical accuracy for a bit), it would make sense to put Gashira above Samurai. This is also a better compromise with my recommendation to have Samurai stand for "knight" at the bottom of the ranks. What do you guys think?

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

So some thoughts about the OXP, now that I've gotten to play around with it a bit:

This OXP doesn't seem to interact nicely with the Farsun OXP. When I play both of them together, the Hunting Lodge gets put way out far in the sun-witchpoint lane, such that moving between the main station and the Hunting Lodge becomes prohibitively time-consuming (especially with Deep Space Pirates installed). Am I right in assuming that you've placed the Hunting Lodge at a certain percentage of the distance between the witchpoint and the sun? How about defining something like an absolute maximum distance so that players with far suns don't have to move too much farther?

Also, it doesn't seem that this OXP changes the experience for non-royal feudal worlds. Is there anything you are planning for activities to do in these systems? Off of the top of my head I can think of missions that go between lower worlds and royal worlds demanding or carrying various items of tribute. Also, it would be great to have a concept of each royal house controlling the feudal worlds around it, and then having gameplay center around the houses vying for control over the bordering feudal systems.

The Black Albatross wrote:

Ramirez wrote:

Thanks people - good to see the wisdom of the crowd in action! So it seems the best compromise to give the right kind of Japanese flavour would be Gashira, Daikan, Kyunin, Shomyo, Daimyo and then possibly Shogun. I'd better get scripting...

Actually, I think LordHaha was suggesting Chugen, Gashira, Samurai (gotta put that in somewhere), Kyunin, Shomyo, Daimyo, then Shogun. Daikan was omitted because it was a tax-collecting position and not really a military rank.

That's correct, at least as of my initial post. However, looking at the documents again, perhaps Ashigaru might not be a bad replacement for Chugen, although I really don't think that either way it would be a huge issue. Ashigaru first appeared as mercenaries (which is what the PC effectively by doing these jobs initially), but Chugen functioned as assistants/squires for the higher ranks warriors and some Chugen were nobles. Both could be promoted to higher ranks.

I honestly wish that there was an extra noble-grade rank to use so that Gashira = "Knight" & Samurai = "Baron", and the new term = "Viscount" but if an additional rank exists, I can't find it presently. However, here's what I had in mind, after the last couple of conversations and a little more research:

PLAYER RANKS
Knight = Chugen/Ashigaru (whatever Ramirez prefers)
Baron = Gashira
Viscount = Samurai
Earl = Kyunin
Marquess = Shomyo
Duke = Daimyo

KING (NPC) RANK
King = Shogun

RE: Samurai as lesser ranked than Gashira, that may not be the correct conclusion. Source #4 here suggests that Samurai were a higher rank than Gashira. This particular page of this book discusses primitive firearm deployment in Japan (at least as it relates to chain of command), says that firearm-equipped troops were commanded by Gashira. In turn, the Gashira received orders from Samurai commanders, and that the same command structure was in use for spearmen and archers earlier on.

Also that second link that I posted in my original message explicitly marked Samurai as being a "fully noble" class, where as Gashira could be either noble or commoner but were not an explicitly noble rank. Other sources indicate this as well.

I'd strongly prefer keeping the ranks as historically accurate, from a scholarly sense, as possible if a historically-based society is going to be portrayed; much like what was done for the European feudal systems that have been integrated into the OXP presently. With the additional research, switching Gashira and Samurai (while not being a big deal for Occidental players) sort of seems like calling a Knight a "Baron", and a Baron a "Knight".

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

I do agree with Black Albatross regarding the minor (non-lodge) feudal states. They should be better integrated into the mod at some point.

One thought regarding that line is, instead of getting 1 point of Reputation with a Great House by making a 40 LY trip and back with a fetch quest ("drop off Trumbles/food/whatever on a planet's surface to improve relations with %NAME Great House" quests), make the nearest minor Feudal systems the targets of such quests. Or if you have to do a long distance trip to a Great House fetch quest, make it a 2 point quest.

LordHaHa

Ramirez wrote:

No, at the moment any missiles removed before the contest aren't replaced afterwards. Remember, once you've accepted a challenge you can still go to the equipment store and sell any pylon-mounted equipment before launching into a challenge.

OK, thanks for clearing that up, Ian.