Legend of the Five Rings General
More Swords More Fun Edition.
Rulebooks:
onedrive.live.com
> Question to GM's:
How strictly do you abide by the etiquette rules during your games?
> Questions to Players:
Have you ever run afoul of the rules of etiquette? What went wrong?
> Question to LCG Players:
What's a good starting point for someone coming into the game fresh?
Other urls found in this thread:
>How strictly do you abide by the etiquette rules during your games?
Depends on the group. I once ran it for a group that was either super into it or used to dealing with it in RL, so it wasn't a problem.
For a later group, I relaxed a little and only enforced the basics (bowing, honorifics, titles) until they became more comfortable with things. Allowing them to use English equivalents of certain things made the transition smoother, I think.
One of these days.
One of these days boys, we'll keep a thread bumped until limit.
I don't want to believe that the system's dead, but considering there are so few players out there, and even less GM's, one has to wonder.
The RPG is alive and well. From my experience, it's growing. A lot of people (including myself) gained interest when FFG bought the franchise. I've ran a few games now, and am running another, though, I gotta figure out ways to spice up my sessions because they're getting bland.
summer usually helps
Man I loved that guy back in CE.
Is there a canonical set of NPC characters, or are Narrators supposed to write it all themselves?
Look on the L5R wiki if you're after characters to use.
There are so many official and template NPCs in so many books ... I have no idea where you would even begin to think they don't exist if you cracked open a book/pdf.
Like, does anyone play this game?
Obvs not. The rl group I found the other day is actually an organ harvesting ring.
how terrible
It's just more that I've never seen any in the gamefinder, sup/tg/ or anywhere online that I frequent. I worded myself poorly.
Im not sticking to etiquette rules very much because my players are not so deep in to the setting just yet, we used to play pathfinder a lot.
We are maybe five sessions in, running in 1118, did the topaz championship from first edition and now running twilights honor. When thats over im going to try to pull back the plot training wheels and let them sandbox around for a while. I love how the setting is treated by the older books, giving you lots of material to draw on, but leaving loads of room for your own stuff too.
Only hole in the system i found so far is i have an Asahina sugenja npc who the players have befriended and i want her to help them out at points since there is no sugenja in the party, but the crafting rules seem pretty sparce. I prefer the fetish rules in first edition to the flat roll ability that Asahina gets in 4th. Im going to use nemurani crafting from 3rd but it is spread over two books and im not sure if its balanced.
Its going to be easier since this is an npc and i can always just hand wave it, but i like to keep things mechanically sound and internally consistent.
Has anyone got tips for fetishes or crafting/creating nemurani?
...
>Has anyone got tips for fetishes or crafting/creating nemurani?
Avoid the easy route of combat nemuranai. Go for simpler, less flashy, more pragmatic effects, if the actual effects are known at all. "The nemuranai of lost heritage that you must keep, protect, and never ever use" is a common l5r-ism, and the simpler the effect, the easier it is to apply behind the scenes when they try to use it. (or before)
Thanka for the advice. The third edition rules for nemurani did sound a bit like dnd magic items to me , and i want to steer clear of that sort of gear treadmill.
Right now i am mostly just going to sprinkle in the occasional healing item as i only have two players mirumoto and togashi and they operate like crabs in combat situations. So i want to keep them able to put themselves at risk without making them sit out for several days of game time to heal.
The one item i want to give them is a pearl like orb that can heal wounds once per day similar to the tier one water spell. But afterwards you need to let it clean itself in clean water overnight and dispose of the dirty water in the morning so they cant get around the unpleasantness of treating wounds.
Next item i want to introduce later would be something to communicate over long distsnces but i want it to feel more limited than sending letters, although faster and more secure. Haven't decided on the flavor or drawbacks yet.
Just in case you haven't read this.
Have you looked at the spells Path To Inner Peace and Legacy Of Kaze-no-Kami? Almost exactly what you're trying to recreate, and as 'for shugenja' means 'effects performed by the kami', it's possible for the awakened kami within an object to perform similar effects.
I'd send the communication nemuranai to the target as part of the effect, though not necessarily in a way that can be easily followed - I've heard of canny groups using that to find targets they know the general whereabouts of.
>"The nemuranai of lost heritage that you must keep, protect, and never ever use" is a common l5r-ism
Just a note: using the nemuranai anyway is maybe an even more prevalent l5r-ism, depending on how seriously you took the Rokugan Your Way! mindset.
Just remember that most neuranai are not created intentionally. They gradually gain that status over decades of use, often after being passed down two or three times.
There are some that are made intentionally, but they're mostly special cases.
Singular artisans can occasionally make one in a fit of inspiration, but even those tend to take time to awaken. The Crab Clan go out of their way to 'force' basic nemuranai weapons to awaken through hard use and repeated importuning, but those are always bound to the individual it was made for and do not survive that individual's death.
And it seems like most of the ones that are made intentionally were intended to be gifts from the start. I can't think of any that actually qualified as nemuranai while being used by the original creator.
Of course most samurai PCs end up using the nemuranai. Depending on the GM's style and whether the orders were more to keep the object sealed/keep it safe/the orders were lost, it may even be beneficial to ignore your ancestor's order/duty.
I was referring to the overpowering theme of "We have rules only so that you can break them!" in L5R. If there is a rule then the setting outright demands you to break it and goes out in its way to fuck you up if you decide otherwise (example: Toturi Tsudao).
Yeah... it's really kind of shitty how little most stories care about being in a samurai(esque) culture.
page 10 bump.
Not sure where you're trying to go with Toturi Tsudao, or what you meant by breaking 'rules'.
Yeah, Tsudao was killed by the attendees at GenCon. There was a vote that went with the Worlds that year. The Winner and top of clans voted for Emperor (Team Dynasty colluded to give Naseru the throne), then the Winner's clan got to pick a Wind to join their clan (Sezaru joins the Phoenix), and then the overall vote determined who died between the two remaining Winds (Tsudao "won" that vote). I forgot how they determined what clan the final Wind joined (Kaneka joining the Phoenix was pretty lolwut).
There's more than a few times where the metagame skewed multiple results towards a single clan. It's one of my least favourite things about the storyline tournaments.
Yeah, the worst was the last Leg of the Race for the Throne. The Scorpion were pretty much running away with the Throne and two or three positions. Everyone was joking that it was going to be a Crimson and Green court (Scorpion, Dragon, and Mantis had nearly everything). Then they turned the last leg into a popularity contest and shit all over the Scorpion base's hard work, in addition to pushing themselves up they basically carried the Dragon. I'm not even Scorpion (I played Unicorn) and it made me mad enough to tell AEG to fuck off.
I'm fine with certain clans simply being more prominent during certain eras. That's fine. So long as the story rewards don't take anything away from the other clans.
What are some interesting effects for nemuranai weapons that aren't related to combat stats?
A Katana that never touches the ground. Its wielder can't be disarmed (Depending on wanted power level, they might still lose the proper grip and have to spend time getting their hands back on it correctly if they would have been disarmed). There always seems to be a plain daisho stand available wherever you happen to be disarming. If a spare stand can't possibly be in the area, a nondescript sword polisher (Who nobody seems to recognize if he's directly pointed out) might arrive to take it for polishing. In the event that neither a daisho stand nor a servant could possibly be in the area, rocks, tree branches, and anything else that could keep the blade off the ground will sharply stand out to the owner.
A sword will leap out of its sheath in the presence of samurai from a clan its original wielder was at war with hundreds of years ago, often incoveninety if that war is no longer ongoing.
A tetsubo attracts a flock of woodpeckers if left unattended, who constantly try to put holes in it to no visible effect.
A war fan changes the design on its face each time you turn it over, showing its original family's mom, stylized kabuki faces, painted battle scenes, and the odd word or bit of poetry.
The shaft of a yari bends like a wet noodle when stroked in a particular way, and becomes rigid again when stroked in another particular way, allowing it to be bent into all kinds of shapes and then locked like that.
A beautiful folding war fan that always draws attention to itself. In actual battles, messages you send with it will almost always be seen by everyone even vaguely looking your way. If you work out a way to bring it into court, you can become the center of attention just by fluttering it over your face for a few seconds, letting you make any announcement or speech unforgettable and impossible to ignore or miss.
What's a good era to start an RPG campaign in considering I would prefer something when the great clans aren't in open war and think the Spider Clan can fuck right off?
The Pre-scorpion coup era. Mantis isn't in, but neither is Spider.
Or you could just fill in one of the gaps between eras. They're lulls in the metastory, so you can pretty much do whatever in there.
Are the Mantis clans still separate minor clans at that point? Because that could actually be ideal, Fox joining Mantis never made any sense to me.
It's less about being prominent during eras, and more about how the iconic event of Rokugan was the first fight against Fu Leng. The seven thunders, one from each clan, fought and died to save the empire.
Latter day groups have tried to emulate that same sense of unification or of being the best the clans can offer ... it falls a little flat when you have things like the 4/6 of the keepers of the books of enlightenment being Crane.
Yes.
The Clan Wars happen about three years after the Scorpion Coup, and the Second Day of Thunder is about two years into that. At that time, Yoritomo threatened to take his entire army and go home right before the final battle against Fu Leng happened, and instead of beheading him and leaving his traitorous corpse for the vultures, they made the Mantis a Great Clan on the spot.
I really like the mantis as a minor clan, having major clans not descended from the original kami seems like a copout to me.
Its going to be quite a long time before i get my players up to that time period, but wold there be any drawbacks to just having yoritomo killed and continuing the mantis as a minor clan ?
Tsudao tried her very best to be a cool chick and do the stuff she was supposed to do according to the in-setting rules. In return, she died the most pointless death ever and literally contributed nothing to the greater plot.
On the opposite side, Sezaru was a crazy emo wizard, Naseru was a petty shittwister who couldn't lose, and Kaneka was another petty shittwister who at least knew how to lose.
Yet, between all these people, the one who actually comforted to the setting had to die while the others lived on and one of them even became the Emperor.
Of course, I'm saying this strictly from the standpoint of the story itself. Shitty tournament results aside, the story does not paint a very good picture of Rokugan concerning its established rules. Be it the case of Tsudao or pic related.
Two swords nigga
TWO
SWORDS
>+shank two niggas at once
>+shank one nigga twice
>+shields are for pussies
>-shields aren't for pussies
...
>Tsudao tried her very best to be a cool chick and do the stuff she was supposed to do according to the in-setting rules. In return, she died the most pointless death ever and literally contributed nothing to the greater plot.
That's only true post Four Winds, once Daigotsue is brought back as the unifier of the shadowlands, reason Iuchiban couldn't be written as a better villain, and story team pet.
Likewise, your assessment of the other three winds are petty, spiteful, half truths.
HELLO, FELLOW SAMURAI.
WHAT IS GOING ON IN THIS THREAD?
GOD BLESS THE KI - EMPER - FUCK.
>That's only true post Four Winds
She didn't do much during the Race for the Throne either. I dunno... she had an interesting romantic sub-plot with Paneki and she killed some Tsuno. Not even her defeating Daigotsu and saving Otosan Uchi led anywhere.
>Likewise, your assessment of the other three winds are petty, spiteful, half truths.
You are free to prove me otherwise. Neither Kaneka nor Naseru were your typical by-the-book samurai, so to speak, and Sezaru fell even further (especially when they started pushing his shitty schizophrenia plot with the Wolf).
>You are free to prove me otherwise
I'll keep that in mind if I get terminally bored.
Which clan lives the happiest and/or comfiest lives?
>Race for the Throne
Shit, I meant the mid/late Four Winds era.
Well, there is one thing I can give you right at the beginning: you can say that most of the problems with the Four Winds characterizations stem from simple shitty story writing, and I wouldn't have a single reason to disagree and thus abdicate my side of the argument. So before you really start thinking about it: if you would say that the L5R writers couldn't write consistent and good characters for shit, then I'm with you and case closed - I can kinda live with the "fics are like art" direction.
>you can say that most of the problems with the Four Winds characterizations stem from simple shitty story writing
Some of it does. Sometimes the writers were let off the ccg results leash and provided cool stories, so I think lead, tournament monkeys, and story arc design can take their rightful share of shit flinging.
Probably the Tortoise. They're pretty much free to do whatever they want because nobody else wants to look at their unsavory activities and they especially don't want to tangle with the Imperial powers that protect the clan. Sure, they have to deal with criminals and smugglers all the time, but they've got Imperial protection so good that they're sometimes called the Fifth Imperial Family. They have comfy holdings all across the country and sometimes beyond.
Does anyone still play on Sun and Moon?
If so I would be interested in getting a group together to play, if anyone else here likes the card game.
Mujina bump