L5RG - Legend of the 5 Rings General

Here's a link to the RPG, though.

mediafire.com/download/7zx8k6x1qx78ug7/L5R - 4th Ed - Player's handbook.pdf

Well, yeah. If they're just goons, make up a few-sentence story why they are in banditry, to give them some character and make them a little more than "just" goons.
Use the appropriate time for planning them, though, it shouldn't take more than 10-15 minutes to create an interesting setup.
>what kind of bandits they are?
>who do they target?
>why do they target the group?
>do they plan to fight and incapacitate the group, or just steal and run away?

These questions are important in that they don't have "shit AI" and just swing sharp iron bar until die, but instead maybe use some dirty tactics and possibly run away if in danger.

You've got a good point, user, it's not too much work and it's better for the game.

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Thanks user

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>go to FLGS
>ask them if they have any LFR cardgame shit
>a smile of happiness and relief over the owner's face, as he says that he has way too much leftover L5R product.
>Sells me an intro set for 5 bucks
Did I make a mistake, L5RG?

Well unless you have another player, you're kinda fucked, that's just CCGs.

But as to why he's got so much product, it's just popularity. L5R has never been the biggest in it's field, but it's always been good at what it does. So while everyone is playing the bigger name games, Magic, YGO, Pokemon, NetRunner, Force of WIll, etc., L5R was gathering dust.

Anyone have some good Suzume art? Red/brown/black colour themed samurai stuff is hard to come by.

Got an example? I can use the google fu

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That samurai is wearing a watch.

Remember when /tg homebrewed a couple of minor clans? Good times.

That was fun. I've been meaning to try it myself, but I don't have a firm enough grasp of mechanical balance.

The idea I had was for a Shrike clan, with a bushi school focused on using acupuncture to strengthen and maintain their own body, and on using their understanding of those same principles to know where best to strike at foes.I was picturing some kind impaling technique that would immobilize or perhaps paralyse an enemy, but I don't have a firm idea of how to crunch it.

Which a Suzume definitely wouldn't do, grubby little pseudo-peasants that they are.

A Suzume would tell a boasting, long-winded story about how he did some favor for some other samurai, who gave him the watch as a gift in thanks, and how that samurai got it from someone else after a thrilling adventure, and how that person had made the watch on commision for someone else who died before they could collect it, and how the person who had died was killed in a duel, and why the other duelist had such a grudge against him-- and by the time the story was over you would be too drunk to care that a Suzume had a watch anymore.

Since it didn't get any replies the last time, I'm going to repost this.
I made a thing by adapting the human version of Mochatchikkan from Way of the Open Hand to 4e and boiling it down the martial art mechanics from 3e into a path. Mochatchikkan is the Nezumi unarmed fighting style, which is occasionally taught to humans. A nezumi that knows it well is a Mocha-mocha. A human that learns it is a Krtich'chifchikkan. The main difference is that humans don't have prehensile tails and can't take advantage of tail based movement or attacks. I tried to make it slightly more powerful than similar martial arts due to the difficulty of even learning it and the mystical abilities it comes with.

Path: Krtich'chifchikkan (Aka "Human-stumbling-about-with-great-skill")
- Replaces: Any Bushi or Monk 2 (or 3?)
- Requirements: Meditation 2, Jijutusu 2, access to a Mocha'mocha capable of teaching, can only be taken with GM permission
- Technique: Casting Down The Stalks
After selecting your stance in a skirmish, you may select Strength or Agility and make a Meditation roll with a TN equal to the selected Trait x 5. If successful, you gain +1 to the selected Trait for a number of rounds equal to its associated Ring. You may only have one of these bonuses at any time, but can cancel a previous bonus at will. This ability can only be used while unarmed. In addition, once per round, you may gain a free raise on an unarmed attack against an enemy you have attacked in the previous round.

Looks really cool. I have no idea if it's too OP or not.

Why are they holding their Katanas so close to the tsuba? Why wouldn't they have one hand high at the tsuba, and one hand low at the bottom?

My 2 months RP hiatus will finally be coming to a end next week as our schedules finally align. Excited to GM this campaign again. Gotta finish out Book of Water with this session and hope we can start on "Book of Air" the week after

Pic is one of the PC's

So I had a fun little conversation about my character and things he's getting up to just the other day.

DM: So did you keep that tanto that was used to kill the Emperor?
Me: Of course, the knife was used to kill my Emperor in front of me because I let my guard down. This is an obsession.
DM: Okay. Take 3 ranks of Unluck.
Me: I hate this. But I will not give it up.

Also interesting thought we once discussed on how to make Minor Clans have less of a shit deal.
As anyone that's looked at a Minor Clan's School can tell you, they're just worse than the Major Clans. Which, when you look at the garbage samurai that come out of the big 7 is just sad.
So the thought goes, why not make the mechanics of a Minor School on power parity with the Major Schools, but only have 3 ranks of Mastery, maybe 4 in the really old clans.
This ties into the lore as well; the Minor Clans haven't been around as long and have far fewer samurai, so their schools have had far less refinement at the highest levels.
This also gives some agency to any PCs that get to a high mastery from those clans in that they have the opportunity to try and advance their school with new techniques.
Thoughts?

There's precedent for it, since even the great clan schools only started with 3 techniques (Evidence shows that it's always 3 for new schools). Even the schools founded by the kami started with 3 ranks and most of the legendary figures from the early empire never got higher than that (Although many of them were insight rank 8-10).
That being said, some of those minor clan schools really are old enough to have rank 5. It only takes a couple hundred years of normal development to get rank 4 and then another couple hundred to get 5, since the schools are all fully developed in every era beyond the first few. And in the more modern eras, which are densely packed with prodigies, special snowflakes, and the occasional training exchange program, it only takes years or maybe decades to completely fill out a school and a handful of paths.

May I use your fan?
Last night the wind borrowed mine,
yet to return it.

Were have you wandered?
Thorns caught in your sleeve say all:
night, a rose, a girl?

If this brush could cut
as well as my rival's sword,
would I have your hand?

/L5rg/, haiku or tanka?

Ask the wind nicely,
for the winds give many things,
like the summer breeze

Wander? No, a dream.
In a realm of such true bliss,
it could not be real

My hand would be yours.
So would the hair on my head,
being brushed and cut.

Playing sadane in L5R is so much fun. I use it on new players a lot. It players get a understanding on the Rokugan culture and etiquette and the RP skills they have.

Good effort, user, but you're thinking of the wrong kind of brush. Anyway, these aren't really meant to be responded to. It isn't always about a back and forth, sometimes you just want to express some human sentiment in the form of a question. They aren't all even supposed to be addressed to the same person.

So, who's taken a look at L5R's earliest eddition?
PDF related

I know that, but I just felt like stretching the mind a bit. It's good to practice.

best clan

That, or use haiku.
Or, sadane AND haiku!
picture related

Fair enough. The brush response was pretty good, if kind of off the wall. Are you crab-san, by any chance? I feel like there aren't very many haiku folk around here.

Well played

>crab-san
That's crab-senpai to you. Are you my Scorpion friend?

The one and only. Like I said, I'm not sure anyone else does haiku at all.

If you marry into another Clan in Rokugan (and you're a woman), do you change your name? Do you change your loyalty?

It's a pity too. Is there even one other user who wants to try out some haiku in these threads? It's always more fun if it's more jan just me and Mr. Scorpion here.

Also, this may please you, but I've put both our characters into the campaign I'm running as important NPCs.

Which partner marries into the other's clan is based on status, not gender, and the lower status partner does indeed change their name and their primary loyalty. Residual loyalty to family members from the other clan isn't frowned on, though, especially in the case of marriages designed to strengthen bonds or forge peaces. You WANT to draw both clans closer together in those cases, so cutting off all ties would be counter-productive.

Hah! That's great, what's going on with them?

Oh hi, didn't see you there. Don't mind me, I'm just busy being best clan.

Basically, They're both co-administrators of a decent-sized city, and the PCs are Emerald Magistrates left under their wing. The PCs see them to get their quests/assignments, and I usually have them quip at eachother (usually over a game of go and/or a bit of sake).
Also, one of them is secretly Master Jade
I'm not telling you which one

Fantastic.

I'm still thinking of a secret I can give to the other. Any recommendations?

>thread starts out quite well
>"best clan" shitposting begins
here comes the cancer

i agree, l5r 4th is great mecanically

They're actually an animal spirit from Chikushudo that's gotten really good at impersonating a samurai who wandered into the spirit realms and never wandered back out.

They have some degree of taint.

They collect forbidden gaijin relics.

well, its a lcg now, so yes, its gonna be completely different

also, no even, cant send back card for koku to support your clan, etc

i find this haircut extremely ugly, it feels unfinished to me, opinions of course

is that an utaku?

Looking at it, I imagine it's less a deliberate haircut, more burns on the scalp making a permanent bald patch.

Wasn't quite drawn perfectly, but that side of her head is burned, so no hair.

Fuck this game

I ran three sessions of it, and it's already turned into a "let's get the GM to give us a waifu" game.

I just want to run a Kurosawa film, my players want to play samurai romance simulator. And I do not know what to do

I mean, you could disallow the Blissful Betrothal advantage. You could also talk to them like an adult about what you want the tone to be.

I'm a bit worried about doing that, mostly because consensus is against me on the matter, and they're having fun.

user, L5R is a drama simulator. They want the game to be about their waifus? Make it about them...about how they avenge the death of their Lost Love.

...ooh, that could work, it fits the theme I'm going for...

You can give them incentives to "earn" their waifus. And you have to make it clear to them that waifus in L5R are not theirs to choose.

Force some / one of them to take "True Love" disadvantage to punch in the fact that blissed bethrothals are relatively rare.

And what kind of characters do they have? If they are mostly Bushi, then give them waifus and send them on missions. Make the waifus send letters and so forth, but let them see them very very rarely.

Just food for thought.

Don't do it user. Players hate when you kill of their waifu to make dramatic tension.
Instead, use the waifus as damsels in distress. Have bandits/oni/bloodspeakers capture the pure maidens, and have the PCs save them before they get raped/eaten/sacrificed respectively.

pic related may be of help, user.

Good good.

So my players tend to not want to play this. My online group will only play if I let the one be whatever nonhuman FOTM there is and the other wants to be the bastard love child of a great clan trained in their techniques but a ronin.

The offline group would mostly be fine, but the one wants to play greedy cowards and the other I discount since unless she's center stage she's playing candy crush.

PFfbbbbt...

I miss running this. The second city campaign was fun. I enjoyed the Doji Sabu session, cause it's fun having a villain get away with everything and then arrange a promotion for the party publicly so they cannot maintain honor and act against him.

In short, how to explain this game to help with buy-in?

>My online group will only play if I let the one be whatever nonhuman FOTM there is and the other wants to be the bastard love child of a great clan trained in their techniques but a ronin.
It could work if he's Nezumi (But he probably wants to be Naga instead, which wouldn't work well) and you run a Carpenter Wall campaign, but it sounds like it just won't work out.
I know how that feels.

>people wanting to be any other non-human instead of best-race, Nezumi
Disgusting

What's the best way to make an archer character without making a tsuruchi?

There are a lot of ways to make archers. If you're looking for techniques, in what clan?

Dragon or Scorpion, but I'll take anything that isn't Crane or Lion

There's a zen archer school for monks, isn't there? I think there might also be a Unicorn school for mounted archery, but I'm not positive about that.

The Dragon have a couple of paths at Mirumoto Rank 4, Dragon's Flame (Generic archery, with a fluff focus on defending the Dragon lands) and Dragon's Wind, a horsebow path (That has SAA when mounted and using a bow and can ignore negative terrain while mounted).

There are a lot of archery paths around, but the Scorpion don't actually have any.

Here's all of the archer paths and schools that I could find. Keep in mind that the paths are really just for elites and you can be an archer without having a special Technique for it (And sometimes you couldn't get a special Technique anyway because your clan doesn't have one). You just have to rely on skills and stats.

Crab
-Falcon's Strike [path] (Belongs to Falcon Clan before they join the Crab)
-Hiruma Sniper [path]

Crane
-Asahina Archer [path]

Dragon
-Dragon's Wind [path]
-Dragon's Flame [path]

Lion
-Nothing in particular

Mantis
-Tsuruchi Archer (Belongs to Wasp Clan before they join the Mantis)
-Tsuruchi Master Bowman [path]
-Tsuruchi Bounty Hunter

Phoenix
-Nothing in particular

Scorpion
-Nothing in particular

Unicorn
-Unicorn Yomanri Archer [path]

Imperials
-Nothing in particular

Brotherhood of Shinsei
-Taoist Archer [path]

Yeah dude the CCG is going out.

Sudenly, a bump
haiku, for a dying thread
averting its fate

Question as a bump:
L5R is inherently a week game. Its set in a Japan inspired setting and has samurai, ninjas, and weird magic users.

That said, what's the most and least weeb characters that can be made?

Most weeb: Rokugani Naruto

Least weeb: Rokugani Solid Snake

>buy the 4e version of the rulebook after seeing it at FLGS
>think it's a cool system not revolving 100% around combat
>hard to find group
>find group forming on roll20, GM mentions he wants to do something different
>figure he means a more social campaign since games like D&D are combat based slogs
>1 person made a non-combatant, several make people somewhere in between, 1 makes a crab, and personally make a scorpion ninja
>turns out he wants to throw us into combat
>railroads through a couple awkward encounters before throwing us into a huge combat without any chance of avoiding it with way too many enemies
>crab is the only one worth a shit in combat
>session end in a shouting match with players telling the DM he has no idea about the lore and how to run L5R since he gave us no clue it was going to be a combat slog
>I'll never be able to play L5R

I'm half considered just to start an L5R group with anons from this thread.

Fuck, I'm certain there are enough people in this thread who'd do a Roll 20 campaign.

I'd be tempted, I can't say I'm experienced in the game or lore at all. I was prepared to give the above mentioned DM another chance, but even I could tell this system was clearly not made to be a D&D combat slog, the combat is just too deadly for that. The guy who made the social class was in no way happy though.

I'd do it In a heart beat.

Neato. Any of you happen to live in North America, hopefully on the east coast, and do any of you have saturday or sunday night off?

Eastern, and Saturdays usually

I'm central but Saturday is probably good as well

great. Any of you wanna volunteer DM, or should I try (and possibly fail) at it?

So what sort of campaigns have you guys played or wanted to play?

I can't say I'd be comfortable with the game enough to run it. My only experience is the unfortunate campaign on roll20 that lasted less than a few hours.

Always wanted to play a campaign where I could play a Nezumi. Nezumi are cute
CUTE!

Meh. I could probably QM
Also, what do you guys think about exchanging skype contact? Would you prefer to communicate in some other way, or does skype work?

I don't mind trading skype info, but I'm not super hype about posting skype on Veeky Forums and leaving it hang around for 2 or so days. If there is a way to PM thru roll20 and trade it'd be a bit better.

just delete the post when you're done, m8

sent my contact request

If any other anons want to get on this action, feel free

My favorite one that I played in was an all scorpion game. Where the entire campaign was trying to kill the yakuza's eldest son, so the youngest son could rule.

But the eldest was so likeable that we never actually did our jobs, to the point that he was in a room, alone, morning his father's death, with weapons along the walls and we still didn't kill him.

Ended up going rogue to protect him...and of course went to the traitor trees.

What is the best Minor Clan and why is it Badger

People who disagree are clearly high on twenty year stale Wasp separatist fumes