Legend of the Five Rings General

>Not Lion, AKA most honorable Clan
If you can't solve all your problems with judicious applications of violence and honor, you're clearly in league with the Shadowlands.

>Most honorable clan
>picks fights which cause all kinds of human suffering every summer, because compassion isn't a virtue of bushido or anything

I like the Lion but their war mongering is really kind of fucked when you think about it. Not like every other clan doesn't do that too on a lesser level, or do something else weird as shit and ignore some bushido virtues too of course. Nobody is most honorable except for that one Phoenix champion who died to make two other clans stop fighting.

...

Was every living thing in ancient Japan afflicted with some googly-eye virus?

And they decided to fix it by bartering with a demon, who cured their googly-eyes by giving them slanty eyes?

>I like the Lion but their war mongering is a direct result of the CCG controlling the metaplot, resulting in them needing an excuse for YET ANOTHER war on a regular basis, resulting in the clan whose "something else" half of the "war and something else" schtick that every clan has is "more war" being used to start them regularly

Even before metaplot they always had summer wars and shit just to flex their muscles. Not real 'wars' where they brought the total power of their armies together.

I mean before the metaplot begins. Setting history. That thing.

>had summer wars and shit just to flex their muscles. Not real 'wars' where they brought the total power of their armies together
So, NTC?

Dragon Clan is best clan.

I like most clans, but Dragon don't really jump for me. I like some of their ideas, like the cool monks and the warrior-phlosopher thing the Mirumoto try to cultivate, Sherlock Holmses and shit, but on the whole they don't click emotionally the same for me as they seem to do others.

Fox Clan is best clan.

...

...

So ran my first session of what is essentially a Crab Summer Beach Party. The group of samurai recently graduated from their dojo in the central city of the region and headed down to the coast to visit their Aunts for the Kanto Festival. We barely got to the festival proper (just some brawling and gambling on the beach), with most of the session spent with them getting some intel on the situation of the region while spending the night at a road side magistrate station.

They had a loose reception from the Magistrate, a woman named Nobuto Satoha, who was "blessed by Osano-wo" after getting struck by lightning a few years ago. She talks to herself and is pretty rough with the "kids" when it comes to etiquette; only doing proper courtesy because their aunts run the port.

But they had a much warmer reception by the pudgy twenty-three year old doshin ronin named Hu, who gambled with them over dice, drank super hard liqour with them to try and make them lose, and generally grill them for what they're up to.

Which is where something of a problem begins. Endo Ato, a Kaiu Artisan in the group took it upon herself to show Hu as little respect as possible and take advantage of his "kindness" of giving up his room for them to stay while he slept in the central office hub. They bantered, but Ato really sees herself as above him (rightly so), but things get weird. She drew him a picture as a thank you gift so he might be blessed to have ever done her a service. Which is innocuous enough, but she also outed him as having taken the kids to the cleaners via gambling when he should've been resting up for prisoner transport duty.

Hu lied and remarked that the reason he was tired and his back was out was because he kept having to bow out to her disturbing offers of marriage, the young girl clearly smitten by his ronin charm.

He was to be disciplined, but then Satoha found the art. And now she's convinced that one of her superior's nieces is potentially a floozy.

Not sure if hawt or dishonorable

Hu wants nothing to do with her, because Ato is clearly a bitch queen in the making; but he'll probably mock her about it if she ever treats him poorly again.

Ato's cousins, a Kuni Shugenja and a Yasuki Courtier, clearly know the truth but they're getting involved with illegal gambling and sedane/boken battles on the beach.

I'm curious as to how far I should pursue this awkwardness to the mockery of one of my players who is a damn good sport; because while it'd be funny it isn't exactly what I wanted to do with the Magistrates.

I'm thinking they denounce it as childishness and keep it as potential blackmail, or worse something Hu puts up in the prison cell with the drunks so that Ato's work can "really be appreciated." Which feels like enough of a jab to be justified while still being very much a breach of etiquette, were he to possess any.

Especially because their aunts run the port and really having any "favors" lying around could be of use to them. Because Satoha only really wants her job because it provides her stability (she's been reading the Twists of False Madness and thinks she's going crazy rather than being blessed due to the whispers she hears) while Hu is only happy with the job because it is steady pay and he's on the run up in Crane lands.

Likely dishonorable. If the Tako Artisan up in the big city finds out she's doing anything like this he'll probably try to slander her so he can keep his art gigs for the cruel and young Governess with an ego bigger than the sun.

Objectively correct.

Ronin aren't doshin. Doshin is a peasant job, like ashigaru. If he's a samurai but isn't a yoriki, since that implies full deputy power linked to a magistrate, he is basically hired strength. Which is fine.

Who most dutiful Scorpion here?

...

Oh yes

I mean she was the second Thunder from their clan and spent a ton of time being a horrible person out of duty to her clan which was officially disbanded anyway. She is dutiful! Also a horrible person, that too.

It's the Phoenix. The Phoenix are the best.

To answer the question on the size of Rokugan in the last thread, the atlas of rokugan states that it's twice the size of England ish. Can't check the book for make certain right now, as am on my way to work.

Its something like that though I dunno how I feel about that. I like to think the Centipede Tattoo is more mystical and sort of like that saintly ability to be in two places concurrently. But I feel that way mostly because I love the idea of Rokugan being about the size of China and having these wide swaths of wilderness that cannot be taken due to spirits, ghosts, old legends, and edicts. A gargantuan environment with a medium amount of national populace.

I agree, the feel I hade for the land is completely out of wack after reading that book. And it sure doesn't help how they describe the land either.

>"They have cultivated every last scrap of it"
>"Large parts of the land is untamed wilderness"

> Not using any of the superior Kachiko artwork

I always had the concept that anywhere capable of growing rice is cultivated, but there are large swathes that aren't suitable for it.

I never get to play L5R, just run it

God, I wanna play a Junshin Scorpion.

Liar, nobody ever runs L5R.

There was a guy in the last thread whoring out a game.

No sessions yet, so my point still stands.
Also, it was a joke.

What's the general consensus on the Second City campaign? I've go a hankering to run something but I'm also incredibly lazy.

Haven't looked at it, but have you tried any of the old adventures, or the stuff on kaze no shiro?

I'm considering some of the HoR stuff, they made all the 4 premades available.

4e*

> Pheonix
> Getting hundreds of the Emperors samurai killed in such a pointless fashion that both sides had to leave so they could throw up in private to avoid dishonouring themselves
S'a good joke you have there Samurai-san. Though perhaps you need to stop drinking.

Maybe it was just the gm, but I never liked HoR, nor what I picked up from HOREmperor's posts regarding rpg design on the official forums. YMMV.

Bayushi Datso
Played by my best mate during my first L5R campaign. Best Scorpion ever.
Once tried to poison me into being bedridden so I wouldn't get executed for forbidden knowledge. A true hero.

Are marriages between samurai strictly in-clan, or do samurai tend to marry those in other clans?

How dishonorabru is it for a samurai to want to marry a peasant?

Marriages between Clans happen all the time, invariably for political reasons, but the majority of samurai marry into their own Family/Clan.

>Marrying a heimin
You would be disgraced for even attempting to fathom the concept. This is up there with using gunpowder or fraternising with gaijin.

>This is up there with using gunpowder or fraternising with gaijin.

It's gotta be worse. It's fucking up the celestial order.

At least you could be a mantis scumbag with either of the other things.

Though if you can come up with some weird way to get the peasant into a samurai you might be able to get shit done. Maybe.

>This is up there with using gunpowder
How would someone go about making guns an acceptable solution to problems in the eyes of Rokugan society?

Go back in time and undo White Stag, then play in the Iron Empire setting in IH2.

Or just change the effect it had on Rokugan.

>Marrying a heimin
>using gunpowder
>fraternising with gaijin
The irony being that while many players and gms think Rokugan is hardline 'never happens', or you cut your stomach then and there, all of these happen within the Empire. It's just a matter of presentation to make it palatable, or keeping a secret.

Shugenja found among the heimin are almost always "discovered" to be of lost samurai bloodlines.

Gunpowder is fine, so long as you pretend fireworks and similar items don't use it.

Gaijin treated similarly to married peasants are semi-legitimate, foreign diplomats more so (though less able to travel).

They're all extreme fringe cases.

>Shugenja found among the heimin are almost always "discovered" to be of lost samurai bloodlines.
Well being able to invoke the kami's blessing IS proof of a samurai bloodline.

>Gunpowder is fine, so long as you pretend fireworks and similar items don't use it.
Best flavour text.

Theoretically they could become a Togashi monk, but that creates a new problem for you in that it's very rare for Togashi monks to marry.

>Well being able to invoke the kami's blessing IS proof of a samurai bloodline
Only in the sense that samurai will lie to claim that power. The kami don't pay attention to blood - they simply have no concept of death. Rokugan is highly traditional, and shugenja are some of the most traditional samurai along them. The kami can, once they take a liking to a mortal, be fooled into thinking another I'd that same person, no matter how long afterwards. Even a heimin can accidentally manage that.

Toku. Somehow I doubt he was the only one. Just the only one honourable enough to admit it.

That theory really doesn't account for a lot of things. Like how if it's only specific kami that recognize you, why are shugenja able to talk to basically call kami? Unless you mean to say that kami are some kind of hivemind?

This is hilarious user, I fucking love Crab inner-party politic stories.

My suggestion is, keep it going. If its fun, the players laugh, and everyone is enjoying themselves, then why not? Hell, it seems like an anime tsundere love story in the making.

I was only ever a player for something like 8 years. My only regret is that all my characters were various flavors of Cranes
>crane kakita duelist with tuberculosis and a heart of gold
>crane duelist courtier with a savvy political sense
>crane daidoji iron killing machine in a thousand years of darkness campaign
>crane zen archer asahina shugenja

Now, since 2012, I'm the only one who knows the setting well enough to run it, so that means im forever GM. And I have soooooo many character ideas now that I'll never get to play ;_;

If Nobunaga could do it, surely an ambitious player character could do it too.

>How would someone go about making guns an acceptable solution to problems in the eyes of Rokugan society?

Easy. If the Emperor likes something, everyone likes something.

In my L5R campaign setting, I use 7th Sea\Theah for my Gaijin. After White Stag (which was actually a religious crusade instead of greedy infighting), the Mantis retained sole (secret) trade with Theah, and became stupidly rich in the process. However, around the 1120's, someone found out that the mantis were doing this. A fast thinking Gaijin trader, a Vodacce, along with his Fate Witch wife, moved first, asked an audience with the Emperor, and because of his wife's powers, not only was he seen, but the audience went spectacularly well. Old Hantei Jodan, so bored and beaten down by all the childish clan squabbles, found his inner child again after becoming so enamored with the Gaijin.

So, Gaijin trade opened up, with some pretty heavy rules, notably no Gaijin can be harmed on Rokuagni lands, but the Gaijin are hard forbidden from spreading their Vaticine Religion.

Firearms are now finding their way into Samurai armies, and only a couple clans, most notably the Lion,refuse to have anything to do with the Gaijin at all.

The Mantis got completely cut out of the loop, since the Vendel League no longer has to get fleeced on prices - so now that the Mantis standard of living is crashing, their basically turning over to full piracy against the Gaijin trade fleets - this of course is making the Mantis one of the most technologically advanced militarys in Rokugan, since they can loophole attacking the Gaijin, and they've begun outfitting their ships with stolen cannons and muskets.

But really, Gaijin work a lot better when you use 7th Sea, considering those nations have heroes as well as villains. Merenae and Thrane just always reek of being complete villian assholes

>theory
Objectively written material. I'd have to find it and read it again to definitively answer your question.

Given I'm not going to do that from my phone, I'd hazard that neither guess is the case, but that the kami following each shugenja are capable of encouraging others of their kind to follow direction. That you can call a theory.

The Agasha have gunpowder, the Daidoji have gunpowder, all the Clans have gunpowder. Actually USING gunpowder is an obscene display of heresy and punishable by death.
It's storyteam bullshit for why the Rokugani have barely advanced technically in over a thousand years, but that's the setting. You just can't use guns in vanilla L5R.

How would you make the Suzumbe Bushi (Sparrow) up to par with the Major Clan bushi schools?

I was thinking of boosting the second technique by giving it a general +1k0 to initiative, and a +1k1 if they have higher honor. But I'm a bit unsure if that doesn't make it overpowered.

Secondly, the third tecnique needs to be changed, but I don't know to what. Currently, if you have a high Perform or Lore skill, it may very well be better to use a void point for +1k1 rather than adding your honor, so it needs to be changed.

Different School.

Ashigaru and Budoka can be raised up to Samurai for long, honorable service, usually with the concept that they have always had the soul of a samurai and this is just adjustment to correctly reflect that in their station.
But then you have a different problem in that they're probably middle aged, definitely still low on the rung and have no wealth or land to speak of, which makes them as unmarriageable as a samurai can get.

The kami do pay attention to blood. That's why there are strong shugenja bloodlines that almost always produce shugenja. You'll be mistaken for one of your own ancestors long before you're mistaken for someone unrelated to you.

Way back when, I wrote a better version of the school. It's on a different PC entirely, but if you give me a sec I'll write up what I remember.

If an ashigaru is raised up in such a way, do their preexisting children also become samurai, or only any children they have afterwards? If it's the first one, you could raise up a loyal retainer in order to marry their younger son or daughter, which would at least avoid the middle-aged problem. The lack of land or wealth would still be an issue, though.

Thanks

I believe that their immediate family (At least spouse and children) become samurai as well. That's how things tend to go in Rokugan. If you get a promotion (Or certain punishments), so does your spouse and children.

I was actually considering a concept like this, though in reverse. Playing a Shosuro actor married off to a different clan, and goes on magical samurai adventures as their spouses peasant servant in one of their personas.

I'm the OP and this is my actual favorite, but I like the Crane a fair bit and find Veeky Forums's reactive hate of them to be funny so I post a lot of Crane. Does nobody like the cool parts of the clan, or has Ree Soesbee's shittiness tainted them forever in the eyes of others or do people just hate art and commandos?

I didn't say Phoenix. I said that one specific one. That's like looking at Moto Chagatai and deciding all Unicorn are secret traitors waiting for an excuse from a warlord or conspiracy or something to just turn on the Imperial Family.

I've converted them here - for fun, I also made a Shugenja school and courtier path.

Wasn't there some document somewhere which converted the traditional 5-rank ronin schools to 4e?

shit, obvious error - Suzume Shugenja's "Any two high or bugei skills" should read "any high or bugei skill".

>Very interesting
The Harriers were such a dishonorobooru idea but I love them still. Though I am glad that in the rules in 4e they eliminate the original 1e 'they believe what they're doing is right so they keep high honor!' loop hole, since otherwise Scorpion would all be honor 10 or something.

>Ree Soesbee's shittiness

Oh? Can you give me some examples?

Crane used to be my all time favorite clan. However, this was back when they were art and life focused, with this underlying current of heroic virtues, marred by money grubbing misers and political backstabbers.

But I've played so many crane, and done so many crane focused campaigns, that I'm honestly bored to death of them, and I find that I'm liking clans I used to hate a whole lot more - namely the Unicorn and Mantis.

I think my favorite clan is probably the Crab, but I really like them all, and subsequently dislike them all, depending on the metaplot lore - for example, Dragon are great, Hitomi run dragon were dumb as fuck, as well as the time period where they booted one of their founding families out over stupid shit.

Daidoji commandos are actually fine, what I hate, and I imagine what a lot of others hate, is the Doji/Kakita double whammy, where a smug courtier will lobby for preferential treatment, and if you try to voice an objection, no matter how reasonable, they'll try to bait you into dueling a guy who has trained his entire life to defeat you in the school of the guy who invented the system you use for dueling at all, and you have to either risk your life or concede that, no, Doji-san was right after all, their preferential treatment IS fair. And then they have the gall to pretend that their dirty politics are actually righteous because they've used their influence to enshrine the system they built and exploit in the empire's law, and the arrogance to imply that you're a lesser person because you reject their "high culture" for the hammer it is.

Even a scorpion is more honest; at least they don't pretend not to be villains.

>I am glad that in the rules in 4e they eliminate the original 1e 'they believe what they're doing is right so they keep high honor!' loop hole, since otherwise Scorpion would all be honor 10 or something.
Same. Honor is the objective virtue of a deed in vacuum, not it's real net good. Low honor but still altruistic and "good" characters can be very interesting.

>they'll try to bait you into dueling a guy who has trained his entire life to defeat you in the school of the guy who invented the system you use for dueling at all

I houseruled an entire 1st Edition school because this actually pissed me off. I made the kakita duelists a VERY small part of the Kakita Artisan school, that maybe accepts\graduates like 20 students every other year.

In their place, I wrote up the Doji Bushi School, which is very similar to how the Akodo Bushi School works, but with a different theme. I essentially made them Zen Swordsman\Archers with a focus on manipulating raises.

I can post it if anyone is interested, but its a 1st Edition school, so I doubt its useful to anyone here.

Basically everything negative people think of them besides the 'oh man look at that arrogant prick' come from her 1e work with them, because the Crane are her pet clan and that's where all the insane best at everything and with high honor ninjas and you should all love them they're the best! comes into existence which the setting had to step back and sand the edges down to produce the cool 'guardians of art and culture with one badass but outnumbered and outgunned bushi family' we have today.

Someone who didn't just wake up, tell the story about her self insert or 1e Kakita Artisans. Or I'll do it, just lemme get going and shit.

That's how they manage to keep a huge chunk of the empire despite regularly pissing off two of the three most militant clans (two out of two before the Unicorn come back) around.

Kakita duelists are great but hardly undefeatable (the Kakita in my game legit lost his first duel he ever did to a Lion). They just have some advantages which can give them an edge in tight contests, or dominate when it isn't close.

My favorite Crane school is the Daidoji Scout though. Rural traps all day erry day

Sure, your average IR1 Kakita duelist isn't going to win every duel he gets into, but neither is he the guy that gets assigned to protect the high-ranking Doji fucking your shit up at the really important courts.

"Dammit Shuusei, why the hell would you want to bring a rice paddy tripwire to the Winter Court?"

>'guardians of art and culture with one badass but outnumbered and outgunned bushi family' we have today

Having played 1st Ed since 2001 and continuing to do so now, with the only crane book I've read cover to cover being the 1st Ed way of the crane, what you said is what they were in 1st ed.

The harrier shit didn't come about until later, around the 3rd Ed time line. the Daidoji always had the reputation of being very tactically cunning, using all sorts of underhanded shit, from snipers to explosives - but this they could only ever do on the defense, because they were fighting in their own backyard. It was a justification for why one of the smallest clan militaries can continue to survive against the largest clan military whose entire focus is military arts. Also, the gunpowder stuff mainly came from the fact Daidoji Uji was a huge gaijin weeaboo, and loved the shit.

So, I guess, Ree started out fine, and then built a mountain of shit on top of a well built foundation. For the longest time, that actually summed up my feelings on L5R in general (ie 1st ed was the best, every other edition ruined L5R) - I dont feel that way anymore though

Yeah, he needed to bring the Winter Court special edition tripwire.

This.

In a game I was in a while back, the Daidoji and the Hiruma had been shadow warring with each other, and there was one particular patch of forest that was almost certain death to enter because of all the traps that both sides had laid down. Walk ten feet, get smacked by a tiger trap. Avoid that and fall into a pit full of spikes. Pull yourself out of that and walk directly into a field of punji stakes. Limp away and get killed by some unseen bastard sniper lurking up in the treetops.

Yeah but same with the assigned yojimbo of other clans. Build two duelists with identical stats at rank 4 and give one the Kakita school and the other...let's say Hiruma. The Kakita will be favored to win, but won't necessarily be so. Plus other schools possess duelist alt ranks which can help give them bonuses there which might be in the repertoire of the major court yojimbo. Similarly the courtier you're assigned to guard has their own school and techniques and if they're not retarded will fight back cleverly to avoid such entrapment.

I mean the fact is the Doji-Kakita double team baiting works enough they keep doing it, but it isn't as guaranteed a thing as people think. Unless you get the bad luck of a higher IR duelist or Kenshinzen being there, that'd be jjust the GM being a dick though.

I'm not saying they weren't that in 1e, but when I read Way of the Crane (And then Secrets of the Crane) after I read up on them in 4e I felt a material difference in presentation.

Of course that's all subjective, so maybe I am letting my issues with Ree and her self insert Kakita artisan color my opinions on her entire work for that period. But we can all agree Akodo Kaage was stupid, right?

>not jumping branch to branch
Do you even scout???

All this duellist talk reminds of me of a minor clan idea I had once - basically, a clan of duellists who disguised themselves as members of other clans to act as champions-for hire in exchange for favours, allowing for a clan to have champions in minor courts or acting as a champion if your champion is indisposed for some reason.

Should I develop the idea more or is it bad?

>Re-asking a question I had from last thread that didn't get answer
Why do people always say Shosuro Actors are so OP? I honestly don't see why personas are worth it or what good you can do with them.

>self insert Kakita artisan

Who? Do you mean Doji Shizue?

>Akodo Kage

The kolat in general were stupid. That plot is responsible for gutting the Unicorn that I loved, and turning them into something awful

Also, the 1st Ed Artisans are the most broken fucking school in the whole book. No one plays one, no one reads what the school does, and ocassionaly, just to fuck with people, I yank an NPC out to do something crazy, and everyone always goes "wait what?"

>"quickly, we need to get back to otosan uchi the save the emperor!"
>"but were in yama umi toshi, we'll never get there in time!"
>kakita artisan takes 10 minutes to fold a paper dragon
>party arrives in otosan uchi on the back of giant flying dragon