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Made in us
Fixture of Dakka





Fun clan! Enjoy!
   
Made in us
[MOD]
Solahma






RVA

I am a Lion but Crane must be, like, my maternal side of the family or something LOL because I love them (sometimes despite themselves).

   
Made in us
Secret Force Behind the Rise of the Tau




USA

I think I like Phoenix and Unicorn the most after really reading into the lore and some of the short fiction.

I like the Unicorn schools, and their Mongol/Samurai fusion theme, and that they're sort of "outsiders" in their own homeland at this point. It's a cool basis for some interesting characters.

Phoenix, I gotta be honest, I just think the Shiba are badasses.

But honestly, I'll try anything once so super excited for the game.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/08/01 19:55:40


   
Made in us
The Marine Standing Behind Marneus Calgar





Upstate, New York

<-- Honorable Crab from way back.

I think the mixed clan group can work IF, you have a clear job to do. Then duty will override any petty squabbles, as everyone is working towards the same thing. You still get a lot of inter-party bickering, or as we call it, role playing.

   
Made in us
[MOD]
Solahma






RVA

I would have pegged you as a Dragon, LoH.

Nevelon, yes the Clans are the principal way of pulling people into the setting, both in terms of giving them a sense of stake and getting them to interact with each other as stakeholders.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/08/01 21:34:34


   
Made in us
Secret Force Behind the Rise of the Tau




USA

I did initially like Dragon so you’re not wrong :p

I do like them as a Clan, but at least in terms of the RPG none of their school or family options really catch my interest other than the Investigator, but I don’t think that class will be best for my first play through. EDIT: I also feel like me playing a Dragon wouldn't be role-playing so much as a self-insert XD.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2019/08/01 23:31:08


   
Made in us
[MOD]
Solahma






RVA

Any update here?

   
Made in us
Secret Force Behind the Rise of the Tau




USA

Not yet. First session is saturday.

   
Made in us
Fixture of Dakka





While I think Crane might be my favorite, it's so hard to claim one, because they're just so much more compelling contrasted with each other.

Crane is so much less interesting without putting Scorpion on one side (both are underhanded, but they're entirely different), and Lion on the other (both are fixated on their honorable reputations and fierce/fast with the sword).

Please post details of your campaign. I've loved this thread, and love hearing about people RPing Rokugan, but most forums/subreddits I find are about the mechanics not the story/characters/etc.
   
Made in us
Secret Force Behind the Rise of the Tau




USA

And I did not give an update for this.

We're two sessions in now, and it's been fun. Really different from DnD in terms of flow. Almost all our playtime has been dedicated to actual Roleplaying, having conversations, meeting characters to have conversations with so on and so forth. I've been enjoying it, cause it really plays out kind of like a historical drama? I could see people who just want some action getting bored, but I've been pretty engaged watching the characters have one to one interactions as the story opens up in a slow burn manner.

We did just have our first encounter, an Intrigue, where three of us decided a local magistrate was being hasty in a decision and worked to persuade them to change their minds.

Someone rolled three explosive rolls, which produced two more explosive rolls, and the GM just said "I think that's what success looks like."

   
Made in us
Battlefield Tourist




MN (Currently in WY)

Yes, that is why I enjoyed games of L5R as most of it was verbal, RP, social combat and it was a huge change from what I had been playing previously.

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Made in gb
Longtime Dakkanaut






I always had a soft spot for mantis so I'm currently out of luck and taking refuge in the dragon clan.

I came late to the party in 4th but I managed to get a full set of the 4thed books which was no easy task in the uk.
I think the fluff is easily some of the best written and lot of the books I got to read rather than play.

Your last point is especially laughable and comical, because not only the 7th ed Valkyrie shown dumber things (like being able to throw the troopers without parachutes out of its hatches, no harm done) - Irbis 
   
Made in us
Secret Force Behind the Rise of the Tau




USA

Pretty sure there are rules for the Mantis clan available in the 5e: https://images-cdn.fantasyflightgames.com/filer_public/03/0c/030cde9c-35e4-467f-9ae0-9de88051d015/mantis_clan_dlc2.pdf

They're thin, but they're there. I think my GM said the Mantis are supposedly going to appear in print in the next source book, Path of Waves. It's supposed to focus on Ronin, Gaijin, and outcasts within Rokugan.

My group had our first death last session. Poor Endo died a duel to the death while the rest of us watched... well two of us watched. I was executing peasants for attacking us on the road and resorting to banditry XD

   
Made in us
Battlefield Tourist




MN (Currently in WY)

Duels to the Death are no joke in L5R.

Support Blood and Spectacles Publishing:
https://www.patreon.com/Bloodandspectaclespublishing 
   
Made in us
Fixture of Dakka





Mantis showing up in a book about Ronin, Gaijin, and other outcasts just feels so right.
   
Made in us
Ancient Venerable Black Templar Dreadnought





Where ever the Emperor needs his eyes

Ive been curious about the new edition of the game, I read the novels in like middles school ages ago and fell in love with the setting.

Played in 4 games of the Rp, only 4e.

Game one, we don't talk about even though it lasted a while. I played a Bayushi Bushi

Game 2 was an all Scorpion party being ran by a new GM, and lets say that took its toll on the GM. 3 guys playing Scorpion as scorpions should be. I played a Shosuro Infiltrator.

Game 3 lasted, hmm like 4-5 years was probably the best group and game I've ever had the pleasure of playing in. It was a mixed Clan party of Emerald Magistrates. I played a Mirumoto (later married into the Isawa) Bushi.

Game 4 I havent been able to be in every session, but I'm playing a Hiruma Bushi.
   
Made in us
Powerful Ushbati





United States

I'm curious about the game too. I gave the card game a try (I played way back when Gold, Diamond, Lotus and Samurai were big. Absolutely loved the game, it's story and lore, the community and the rpg scene. Unfortunately the new game lost all the flair, is the same true of the new RPG?
   
Made in us
Secret Force Behind the Rise of the Tau




USA

There are people who really don't like 5e (you can still get 4e from DriveThruRPG as a PDF).

If I were to offer a review of 5E from my experience;

L5R 5E is a game that is really for a particular kind of player/group. It's for dedicated roleplayers. People who really want to immerse themselves in their characters and a very well fleshed out setting with rules that are primarily oriented toward enabling you to play the kind of character you want to play. It's all about simulating a samurai drama, with courtly intrigues and plots, a justice system where trials are sword duels and a magic system that's built on a general idea of Shinto and animism. I feel it's worth saying, while Rokugan is a pastiche of Japan, the people who made this setting did do a fair bit of research. It's a fantasy setting, but it's the kind of fantasy setting you'd see in a Wuxia film with one foot in historical reality and the other in fantasy. It's in setting, and character, that the game shine.

This comes with trade-offs. I don't call these "cons" simply because they seem to be part of the game design, or generally, consequences of the kind of game L5R 5E is. Character sheets in L5R are slightly more complicated than those of DnD. You have a lot of things to keep track of, and you can easily stumble into situations that are more disadvantageous to you than you initially expected very easily. The rule books are clunky as references because of how many things you might need to reference (I found the GM screen really useful just because it has a lot of things on it that you'll frequently use). You need to know your character inside out if you want a session to run smoothly. Most importantly, the game is heavily oriented around its setting and lore.

While the game encourages really getting into your character, depending on the GM, not every character concept is going to fit with the setting or even be playable (unless you're okay with being assassinated two sessions in because you pissed off the Daimyo by telling him exactly what you think of his job performance).

For actual cons; the rule book is straight-up clunky and there are limited official/third party reference materials. Making a character takes longer than I think it should because of all the page-flipping you have to do. This is mostly an inconvenience.

The real flaw in 5E is rules ambiguity. The core rules are rock solid, but only take up about the first 50 or so pages of the book. The next 500 (including all the splash books out now) are long lists of all the ways you can ignore/modify the core rules. I find this is likely to turn a lot of players off. It's not an intuitive system and it gets complicated because the rule books are poorly laid out and the rules have lots of vague and unclear interactions.

You really need dedicated players and a flexible GM to make this game work. If you have that, then it's amazing especially if Samurai drama is the kind of setting and characters you want to play.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/10/14 23:46:00


   
Made in us
Ancient Venerable Black Templar Dreadnought





Where ever the Emperor needs his eyes

 LordofHats wrote:
There are people who really don't like 5e (you can still get 4e from DriveThruRPG as a PDF).

If I were to offer a review of 5E from my experience;

L5R 5E is a game that is really for a particular kind of player/group. It's for dedicated roleplayers. People who really want to immerse themselves in their characters and a very well fleshed out setting with rules that are primarily oriented toward enabling you to play the kind of character you want to play. It's all about simulating a samurai drama, with courtly intrigues and plots, a justice system where trials are sword duels and a magic system that's built on a general idea of Shinto and animism. I feel it's worth saying, while Rokugan is a pastiche of Japan, the people who made this setting did do a fair bit of research. It's a fantasy setting, but it's the kind of fantasy setting you'd see in a Wuxia film with one foot in historical reality and the other in fantasy. It's in setting, and character, that the game shine.

This comes with trade-offs. I don't call these "cons" simply because they seem to be part of the game design, or generally, consequences of the kind of game L5R 5E is. Character sheets in L5R are slightly more complicated than those of DnD. You have a lot of things to keep track of, and you can easily stumble into situations that are more disadvantageous to you than you initially expected very easily. The rule books are clunky as references because of how many things you might need to reference (I found the GM screen really useful just because it has a lot of things on it that you'll frequently use). You need to know your character inside out if you want a session to run smoothly. Most importantly, the game is heavily oriented around its setting and lore.

While the game encourages really getting into your character, depending on the GM, not every character concept is going to fit with the setting or even be playable (unless you're okay with being assassinated two sessions in because you pissed off the Daimyo by telling him exactly what you think of his job performance).

For actual cons; the rule book is straight-up clunky and there are limited official/third party reference materials. Making a character takes longer than I think it should because of all the page-flipping you have to do. This is mostly an inconvenience.

The real flaw in 5E is rules ambiguity. The core rules are rock solid, but only take up about the first 50 or so pages of the book. The next 500 (including all the splash books out now) are long lists of all the ways you can ignore/modify the core rules. I find this is likely to turn a lot of players off. It's not an intuitive system and it gets complicated because the rule books are poorly laid out and the rules have lots of vague and unclear interactions.

You really need dedicated players and a flexible GM to make this game work. If you have that, then it's amazing especially if Samurai drama is the kind of setting and characters you want to play.


The bolded and underlined part just sounds like 4e to me, cause if you're playing true to the setting thats mostly how its always gonna end up being. The rest sounds like it'll probably be why we likely wont swap over for a long long time. 4e's rules set are too ingrained at this point for an easy swap.

This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2019/10/15 00:10:52


 
   
Made in us
Ancient Venerable Dreadnought





The Beach

It's a game with a lot of potential, but also a lot of mechanical problems.

First things first: The current FFG version suuuuuuucks. There's no real nice way to put it. The entire system is a disaster.


4th Edition is probably the most "playable" one, though I'd highly recommend digging through online house rule lists. Another downside of 4E is that it didn't have a huge print run in the first place. So you'll probably be stuck with PDFs unless you can luck out on a used copy not selling for like $100.


The other problem with L5R is really just in player mentality. It's a really hard game to play "correctly" without it turning into D&D with Katanas. The other problem is that it's a game setting where there a ton of characters to play where you don't have to be a samurai. Players not invested in a "real"samurai game will ostensibly be drawn to play Scorpions or Unicorns, or Crab, where they don't have to play by the code of Bushido, which is basically like not playing a samurai game in the first place. Which, if you're interested in the game because you wanted to play "Fantasy Sengoku Japan" you're not going to get it.


And, if the troublesome rulesets, "High" setting RP difficulty, and high requirement for player buyin didn't turn you off, like others have said, play all one clan. And if you want to actually have the players be samurai, go with Lion or Crane. Lion are the coolest clan anyway, with their sweet 80s hair helmets.

Marneus Calgar is referred to as "one of the Imperium's greatest tacticians" and he treats the Codex like it's the War Bible. If the Codex is garbage, then how bad is everyone else?

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Made in us
Powerful Ushbati





United States

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:
It's a game with a lot of potential, but also a lot of mechanical problems.

First things first: The current FFG version suuuuuuucks. There's no real nice way to put it. The entire system is a disaster.


4th Edition is probably the most "playable" one, though I'd highly recommend digging through online house rule lists. Another downside of 4E is that it didn't have a huge print run in the first place. So you'll probably be stuck with PDFs unless you can luck out on a used copy not selling for like $100.


The other problem with L5R is really just in player mentality. It's a really hard game to play "correctly" without it turning into D&D with Katanas. The other problem is that it's a game setting where there a ton of characters to play where you don't have to be a samurai. Players not invested in a "real"samurai game will ostensibly be drawn to play Scorpions or Unicorns, or Crab, where they don't have to play by the code of Bushido, which is basically like not playing a samurai game in the first place. Which, if you're interested in the game because you wanted to play "Fantasy Sengoku Japan" you're not going to get it.


And, if the troublesome rulesets, "High" setting RP difficulty, and high requirement for player buyin didn't turn you off, like others have said, play all one clan. And if you want to actually have the players be samurai, go with Lion or Crane. Lion are the coolest clan anyway, with their sweet 80s hair helmets.


Been running 5E for my group for a month now with zero issues. I'm not really sure what the complaints about the setting and set up are all about. The FFG dice system for 5E is fun, tight and really nice. We've had some just hands down fun moments so far. I'm also not sure why the players need to be shunted into one clan. My group has a Dragon, a Crab, 2 Scorpion, and a Crane with zero problems.

What are some of the issues you experienced that caused you to have the view of it you have? I'm curious.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2021/03/20 11:24:04


 
   
Made in us
Secret Force Behind the Rise of the Tau




USA

From my own experience, there are so many things you can do with successes (that are all distinct for each element) that fully resolving rolls can be a somewhat lengthy process.

Sessions can be intensive or slow as a result.

   
Made in es
Inspiring SDF-1 Bridge Officer






Let's just say that I don't agree with the assessment that the 5th edition system sucks. Like, at all.

I've been playing the game since the very beginning, and I've been working on the spanish edition for the last 15 years, and the current edition is the most focused one by a wide margin. It knows what it wants to depict and tires to do it. It also has actual social rules that are mostly lacking from earlier editions outside of skill rolls and "I win" courtier buttons.

That said, 4th edition is the most polished version of the R&K system, and the core book is the most complete one, with thw added benefit of being timeline agnostic.

Furthermore, the 5th edition has issues, as it was kind of unavoidable, really, both with being a completely new ruleset (unlike the other editions, qhich are incremental upgrades) and with the fact that it really didn't go far enough, IMHO, with the culling; as a result, things like duels are lenghty and have the "netrunner problem".

That said, the core of the system is great, and it does a better work of portraying the characters than it did. That, coupled with the new school framework, allows for having characters from the same clan/school that feel (and play) completely differently from others from the same one.
   
Made in us
Secret Force Behind the Rise of the Tau




USA

 Albertorius wrote:
Let's just say that I don't agree with the assessment that the 5th edition system sucks. Like, at all.


I definitely wouldn't say it sucks. It's clunky in a few corners where language or terms are not clearly defined, but the group can manage that.

That said, the core of the system is great, and it does a better work of portraying the characters than it did. That, coupled with the new school framework, allows for having characters from the same clan/school that feel (and play) completely differently from others from the same one.


I think the thing I appreciate about L5R that is lacking in other systems I've played is how incredibly well the rules themselves support the fantasy of the game. They get you into character in a way DnD or Fate just don't and they enable playing that character the way you envision them. If I had any real complaint against the game, it's really just that rolls take too long to resolve sometimes. There are too many things you can do with a roll at times, and that slows the game down if the whole group isn't very dedicated to what it's doing. If the group is dedicated though, that really just helps the fantasy of the game move forward and you can enact dramas from a Samurai film with comparative ease. It would never work so well in a D20 system.

   
Made in es
Inspiring SDF-1 Bridge Officer






Yeah, it's a problem that shares (albeit at a smaller degree) with FFG's Genesys system.

In both cases I have found it better to make less rolls as a general rule but with a greater continuing effect going forward.

That is kind of the reason why I feel the designers didn't really go far enough, as the current techniques are designed more for a "second-by-second" rolling sequence, particularly in the case of skirmishes and duels, where I think they should probably would have been better off zooming out a bit.

But as I said, I usually tend to have the players make less, more meaningful rolls, and it has been working great so far. It has the added benefit of having the time to define the feelings of the character associated with the strife tokens, and having to roll less often also managed to stave off the players's fear of constantly losing composture and unmasking. They have actually found that they want to unmask, at times, because they can do and say things that they wouldn't think of otherwise.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/03/27 11:30:56


 
   
 
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