Veeky Forums, need help with L5R 4e

>Back from a session
>There is a /l5rg/ on Veeky Forums

Huh... Long time no see!

Hey ninja-shits, consider this most honorable plot line: the local lord died and the next day his banished son returned. Now a cruel man has become your lord, and began to act without compassion. It is on your party to see thos matter is dealt with honorably and properly.

Just walk up to him and challenge his ass to a duel to death. The duel takes place wherever you are. No preparation bullshit or championing.

If the dude refuses then call him a coward who has no honor, then strike him down like the peasant he is and go on with your life.

If the dude accepts then strike him down in a fair duel and go on with your life.

>challenging his lord to a duel

LaughingCranes.jpg

What? If you don't have the skill to do that, then you are most likely not honorable, and thus you shouldn't restrain yourself to "honorable and proper" methods. Go and poison the guy or some shit.

If the son was banished, then he's banished. He doesn't get to come back just because the person that banished him died, and he certainly doesn't get to become lord. If he shows his face he's a criminal, and can be treated as such.

MFW someone leaves the door to Sakkaku open.

While we're here. I need one player to fill a spot in the game I'm running on Discord. It's Saturdays, 5pm. At current we have one courtier, one bushi and one shujenga. Prod me on Kogi#9546

Still looking? Couldn't message you direct.

>What? If you don't have the skill to do that
Skill doesn't matter in this; status does. High enough status, and they can ignore your challenge outright and you'll look stupid for issuing it.

Depends on the nature of the banishment.

>Implying he doesn't out-status you enough to laugh at your challenge and then demand your sepukku for your treachery.

Learn some subtlety.

sepukku is offered, not demanded. Though your lord can dismiss you from his service and then sic his other vassals on you, effectively executing you.

...

If the guy turns down the challenge because "muh status" then Outcome 1 takes effect: strike him down without a duel. You gave him the chance to go out with dignity, if he is not up to that, then it is his problem and not yours.

Caring about status in a matter of honor is absolutely shrameful display.

You don't fully understand Rokugan. People of higher status are above you because of divine will and the good kharma of their past lives. The more status you have, the more fundamentally correct you are in all things.
If some idiot jii-samurai challenges a Clan Champion to a duel over some slight, you aren't refused because he's afraid he might lose, it's because his petty threat is so unquestionably wrong and flawed that to actually accept the duel is a waste of time and even potentially blasphemous.

Mind you, Glory can also factor into this. A heroic samurai who struck down a great oni in battle and is famous as a paragon of bushido for example could push it a fair bit further even if his status isn't anything spectacular.

>A heroic samurai who struck down a great oni in battle and is famous as a paragon of bushido
,,, would be raised in rank within the clan's armies, possibly shipped off to the imperial or jade legions.

Though, the topic of the shadowlands isn't kosher. Depends on exactly when and where. Other events may be used, officially.

A warrior of such renown and widespread fame would be definitely be granted some kind of position, no Clan would pass up putting a name like that at the head of an army or sat in an important rival court.
But even with his reputation for honour and righteousness, punching too far above his weight could just be dismissed by his superiors as blasphemous unless he had proof (re: testimony from someone at least as powerful as his accused) of some heinous crime.

Yeah. Glory often leads to status increases but I meant 'If they did something like that before any such thing' (Like say, challenging a general who ran away during that very battle).

I was mostly trying to say 'It's not quite a hard and fast 'X above you = No ability to challenge''. The exact situation and the reputation of each person involved can have a serious impact. As well as who is watching. It's easy to say no if you are the highest ranked person in the room but if he's in front of his own superiors it can make it harder.

>I was mostly trying to say 'It's not quite a hard and fast 'X above you = No ability to challenge''.
I was disagreeing with that, and pointing out that it's not the glory that allows one to challenge someone to a duel.

If you really have to challenge someone legally and they're of considerably higher status, then the common recourse is to watch for an in with someone who can & wants to challenge them, then offer to be their champion in the duel.

>There are a few situations where challenges can be dismissed or ignored. If the challenger is of significantly lower social station (two or more Ranks of Status), he is acting beyond his rank, and the challenged can opt to simply shrug him off and dismiss his accusations.
Whilst there may not be a "hard and fast 'X above you = No ability to challenge'" there is a hard and fast 'X above you = no need to accept'.

Yeah you need to do some prep work to get a challenge through.

First you'll need enough evidence that he abuses his position beyond the scope of traditions and bushido. After that you'll need support of someone of similar rank to your target who can support your challenge and willing to put his own status and reputation on the line. Someone from the Lion clan may very well agree to that especially if he is a neighbour and knew previous lord.

Only after getting all the needed support and evidence can you issue your challenge. Ideally you should already have someone from Empire's bureaucrats on the stand by to observe the duel due to status of people involved and to prevent any possible cheating if your target is really evil and doesn't care about honour much.

Due to the fact that you will be acting as a proxy of other lord there is no way a challenge will be considered honourable if you don't allow your opponent to chose his champion. So there will be more problems. It will be good to check if this evil lord doesn't have some master swordsman blackmailed.

And in the end you still need to win in a duel.

>It will be good to check if this evil lord doesn't have some master swordsman blackmailed.
Or duped, or just plain supportive of the 'evil lord' - because few people consider themselves the villain.

I assume we are looking for a 10.0-Honor-all-7-Virtues-compatible-zero-fucks-given-no-shit-taken ->honorable

Status trumps honour at all times, Rokugan isn't some cutthroat Mad Max world where might makes right, nor is it a fair and just place where a man can advance on his own merits, and even sycophancy can only get you so far. It's an utterly, intrinsically hierarchical place where the person above you IS better than you and HIS opinions are MORE CORRECT than yours.
And the important thing to remember is that the majority of Rokugani don't just pay lip service to this concept, they live it and uphold it. Pragmatists and other detractors of this system are usually blasphemous heathens and/or linked with the Kolat and are considered subhuman animals in need of swift and brutal death.

So the tl;dr is that if a powerful daimyo calls your freshly gempukku'd teenager a faggy little pussy who couldn't win a fight against a housecat then slaps your gf's ass in the club, outside of an honour ding for breaching courtesy he gets away scot free and you can either smile or say thank you. Welcome to Rokugan.

>Status trumps honour at all times

The expected Honor in Rokugan is 4-5 and not 10 either. The vast difference between "what it is" and "what it should be" is basically the core premise of the setting.

Then you are dishonorably executed for treason, your immediate family is forced to commit sepukku, and are stricken from the record. You and everything you and your family are is forgotten.

>It should be noted that, just as Akodo pointed out in his final line, courage does not mean foolhardiness. After all, a samurai’s life belongs to his lord, not to him. A samurai who throws his life away in a useless and selfish gesture is not behaving honorably, but rather is failing in his duty to lord and clan.
There's a difference between cowardice and discretion.

Which is why you're more likely to see a samurai that has finally snapped shank the example dead daimyo's returned son at an opportune moment, rather than stand forth, issue a duel, and charge when it's laughed down or outright ignored.

I think it was Love & Honour or The Hidden Blade that ended with something similar.

Every DM I have ever met has always said the same thing when I ask them about L5R. "I dont know how to run it / Its to complex / I dont even know what kind of adventure I will run."

Its the only game that I just cant seem to find a DM for. I both all the books and most are still sealed because I just cant get a game off the ground.

If they don't recognize honor, then they can join the lord dude on your to-kill list. Emma-O will do the judging, don't worry about that, you just have to send them to him.

Now, stepping to a Honor 10 character and telling him that what he did was wrong is a whole different can of worms, especially in the conformist society of Rokugan. I mean, what kind of person would have the spine to judge this guy and not crumble under the pressure? Another high-honor person would just recognize the righteousness of the action and move on.

then you fucking run it

It depends on a clean and if he's a magistrate, but a relatively acceptable one is it's not available or needed honestly.

>then you fucking run it

That's not a solution when your only interested in playing it.

What might cause a young shugenja to be without a yojimbo? I need a good explanation for why my character does not have a yojimbo. I was thinking something along the lines of all prospective yojimbo have been shooed away by a certain meddlesome antagonist. How unlikely is it for a shugenja to be traveling around without a yojimbo?

If your shuggie knows how to defend himself/herself (ranks in Kenjutsu and Iaijutsu) then there is no need for a yojimbo. Or maybe the shugenja in question works with some sort of super-special magic (mind control?) that makes yojimbo work redundant and/or counter-intuitive.

Sorry there, Die Hard. The result will still be the same. You will die being called an honorless dog. In Rokugan perception is everything, your family will suffer for your perceived ignobility.

Then you are a selfish little twat.

If he is low ranking and not on hazardous duties, it would not be too unusual. For example if he is assigned to go out and bless the fields of a handful of villages that have not been hassled by bandits or the like, a shugenja might just go on his own to lessen the burden on his daimyo. This is especially true if his daimyo is relatively poor and has fewer samurai to spare.

>Then you are a selfish little twat.

I am a horrible DM. I find no fun in it and my group all agreed I'm terrible at it.

>You will die

That's a pretty big "IF", don't you think?

That brings to mind a question of how Shugenja are assigned. If some minor family who controls a village or two pops one out, do the shugenja come back after training or do they go to a more important court? What happens if they're the only heir to the line?

Also we know that if a peasant can talk to spirits it's diacovered they were really 'samurai all along' and given training, but what if they're an adult when itcs discovered? And would a small family (samurai or not) get a big status boost of they pop out a ton of shugenja?

Well you cut down your lord in what has so far described in public after he turned down a duel from a lesser. Shit's gonna go south fast yo. What are you going to do, kill everyone who tries to stop you/arrest you afterwards? That only makes you more guilty as far as they can tell.

Thanks for the answers!

The shugenja in question is young and cannot defend herself, but is traveling with other samurai from different clans. The mission has taken her into dangerous territory twice.

>a shugenja might just go on his own to lessen the burden on his daimyo. This is especially true if his daimyo is relatively poor and has fewer samurai to spare.

I think I'll go with something like this.

>Well you cut down your lord in what has so far described in public after he turned down a duel from a lesser.

Obviously, before you cut down your lord, you give an explanation of why you will do it. At this point, a honorable magistrate will just shrug his shoulder, while a not-so-honorable magistrate will most likely look away so that he doesn't have to embarrass himself with your case.

As said before, perception is everything in Rokugan. If the perception is on point, then there is no problem. You struck down a cruel lord, ending his shameful reign and saving his Clan/Family from a great deal of trouble. Well done. You should have been more... subtle, but hey, no harm no foul! People will give you bad looks because you did some pretty harsh shit, and a dude or two will go for you because "muh revenge", but otherwise your position is pretty much unassailable.

I don't think there's canon for this, but my general thinking is that people who need shugenja get them through exchanges or working through the feudal ladder.

So if you're a lord who needs a court shugenja and there's a shugenja somewhere below you (vassal of your vassal or whatever) then you can call them to court. Your vassal has to obey you, so you can just take their dudes. Of course, then you're probably the one paying for them. This is how promotions work.

If you don't have any below you, you either go without or you trade for one. That might mean ordering some of your bushi to swear fealty to Lord Shugenja-provider in return for one of his shugenja swearing fealty to you, which would give you a shugenja lineage for future generations. It might also mean a temporary exchange program.

I generally assume that every family (Doji, Akodo, and so forth, not people who are closely related type families) has at least a few lineages that reliably produce shugenja, and the shugenja families are just the ones that produce a ton. So both probably happen, but your Rokugan may vary.

I really don't think you get Rokugan and how the celestial order and honor works. If you killed yourself right after, then yeah that might be considered ok. The closest you could get to telling off someone like that is a ritual where you painfully cut your gut open three times, bandage it up and hide it till you're in his court, wait for a chance to speak, and then show off your wounds while dissing him. It shows you'd rather die painfully and slowly than work for him.

But hey man, everyone has their own interpretation of rokugan and yours is a bit more western heroic than the standard. You do you.

Well, I must admit, I don't really think -you- get how Rokugan works in general. I mean, people in this setting break and disregard basic rules on a daily basis, and violate the higher rules to build character - and everyone in-setting is more than willing to look away and pretend that none of this is happening.

Your interpenetration sounds kinda... I dunno... meta-y. But yeah, as you said, Rokugan Your Way and stuff.

How many samurai live in a court or village? Are there Samurai lording over every village, or do they just gather in central locations and project force from their holdings?

There is one case where you really have no ability to challenge under any circumstances, and that's the Emperor.
Anyone who tried to do that would either be immediately cut down by the Seppun or immediately told no and then they'd probably lose their positions within the week due to their allies avoiding them like they've got the plague and their enemies leveraging their stupidity for all that it's worth, depending on whether they're a very high ranking, very well respected person that the seppun sort of actually trust.

Pretty much everyone goes where they get assigned. The shugenja from the backwoods village probably won't be assigned there, but they can visit home once in a while and would have to come back and step up once they inherit stewardship of the village.
Usually, adults who discover they were a shugenja all along are too set in their non-shugenja ways to get anything out of it. There are some samurai who had the gift, but ignored it in favor of being bushi and it just atrophied. A peasant in that situation would probably be evaluated by a proper shugenja, and if they have any talent at all, might be made into a ji-samurai and given the basic training so they don't set themselves on fire.

Most villages don't have any permanent samurai and just run themselves. It's actually how mercenary ronin get most of their work. A well-off peasant village attracts bandits, and having an actual samurai around to protect it is great, even if they are relatively expensive and not always reliable.

I don't play this game, but the OP topic has me wondering.

What exactly stops the players from going 47 Ronin all the time?

Mechanically, it is easy to learn. Roleplaying the society can be a burden, but as long as the players are also new and forgiving it really shouldn't be an issue. Unfortunately, the best way to learn to run L5R is by playing L5R.

As far as what adventure to run? An investigation. Always an investigation. You can run other things, from dungeon crawls and murderhobos to high court social drama, but investigations are what L5R does best.

>What exactly stops the players from going 47 Ronin all the time?

Literally nothing, to the point where they are mostly expected to go 47 Ronin all the time.

One of the key NPCs in the setting went 47 Ronin so hard she almost handed Rokugan to the God of Evil.

Nothing in particular, but those situations almost always end with the deaths of the participants. Rokugan will romanticize it, but it's still illegal and dishonorable unless you commit seppuku immediately.
Honor and bushido is considerably more important to Rokugan than it ever was to Japan, but that's because they had literal actual gods come down and make it important, and their ancestors really do interact with and judge them for how well they seem to be following the rules.

They still break them of course, but it has to be done subtly or the consequences are disastrous.

Isn't that the purpose of all those rubbish honor systems?

If your DM wants it, you can be forced to sudoku for drinking your tea wrong, so you should preempt them and kill the villains then yourself in every situation, then roll another character.

>They still break them of course, but it has to be done subtly or the consequences are disastrous.
>Invade the Empire at the head of a daemon army.
>Sacrifice your own son to Fu Leng.
>Burn and rape everything in your path.
>Become the Fortune of Persistence.

Welp.

Forgot the pic

While killing yourself can be worthwhile to the honor system, resolving the situation without killing yourself can be *more* honorable, if you spin it right. After all, your clan, family, and lord all put a LOT of resources and time into you. Training and equipping a samurai is expensive.

He also turned it around and his clan was essential in the ensuing fight.
Making him the Fortune of Persistence was a political thing. The Emperor could have just let him die, or could have demanded his head, but making him a fortune of a trait that he did exemplify firmly brought the Crab into his circle of supporters. And even decimated, the Crab was one of the most powerful military forces in the country, still able to fight any three other clans to a standstill.

>Making him the Fortune of Persistence was a political thing.

That's the point. Consequences in Rokugan are swept away without a second thought if it results in a more convenient solution. You can do the most horrible thing imaginable, and still get rewarded and walk away scott free because it is convenient for all participating parties. Nobody cares what you have done or whether you will do it again, people are looking out for their own asses and won't bother you unless it is absolutely unavoidable.

That's true. I think it's also a matter of rank in play, but I tend to go with the worst assumptions, i.e. the powerful get off when it's convenient but the low rank good trends to get fucked. Makes for more challenging stories set the least.

How many Samurai live in area together then, just a family and their servants, or is it more like a barracks where young samurai go to serve a lord militarily?

If you're part of the military, you probably live in the barracks of a castle, fort, or outpost. Others who serve often have their own small rooms or possibly apartments in larger castles. Many samurai who live in towns or cities have houses. A samurai who is staying in a small village might displace a peasant family if the village doesn't have an inn or other guest house.

>I think it's also a matter of rank in play

I think it is more up to simple favoritism and "might makes right" - the Lion dude who inadvertently founded the Dragonfly Clan is a good example for the former, while Asahime and her People's Legion fits the latter. Hell, Tsudao had to shank a random nigga because he was in her way, and she outranked that asshole big time.

Aren't all samurai in the military? Or do people just get called up for X years to serve before going back home and doing Samurai stuff there.

Courtiers are still samurai, but they aren't typically part of the military-- and depending on the clan, Shugenja aren't usually, either.

Even among Bushi, plenty never see military service-- some become bodyguards or magistrates, or get assigned other duties that don't put them into an actual army.

In most clans, only active military bushi count as military, and guard bushi, courtiers, and shugenja do not. Depending on the clan, they might all have military rankings to enable swift and easy conscription, and all samurai are expected to have military training (Of course, not all do, but most courtiers can function as logistics officers at least) but for the purposes of this, only active duty military grunts actually live in barracks.

Well, them and students of a bushi dojo. They tend to have barracks as well.

Seven years later, the dude who founded the Dragonfly with the Lion's betrothed accepted a lethal duel from the Lion he insulted, and let him win.

Military bushi tend to guard a fort, and in times of war serve in a unit. Is there anything describing military life or the size of their squads? I know the basic unit is about a hundred men lead by a captain.

War and Fan has some mixed in with all the strategy and logistics talk, Book of Fire has more, Emerald Empire has a chapter on it.

>Aren't all samurai in the military?
Depends on edition. The further back you go, the less differentiation there is.

"Yes" but at the same time no. Think of the president of the untied states. He is the commander in chief but no one expects him to charge the field of battle. He is a part of the military but also not.

Where the line ends is drawn is different for each clan and even each house in each clan. Some are expected to jump right into the thick of it like the Crab clan while others never expect to really use their swords except perhaps in a duel.

At the same time, even the most sheltered courtier or shugenja may find themselves in the right situation to be called to battle. Rokugan being what it is, they're usually being used as figureheads while someone else does the work.

Many courtiers actually can make pretty good ranged combatants as they tend to have a higher Air Ring than most and Reflexes governs Kyujutsu. And even the most weedy shugenja can pull any spell out of their ass if they have enough prep time to Importune it.

That presumes the common courtier trains their reflexes to match their awareness.

Importuning is essentially an extra required roll (ie; double failure chance) and +10 TN. Not all shugenja can manage that with any spell.

Hey guys, I have some questions I'm about to start a l5r rpg campaign with some friends with the first time and I'm starting to become somwhat infatuated with l5r, however loke I said I have some questions, one: how popular is l5r currently? Is it being updated regular or is there a major update coming within a years time? And two: in the rpg I'm playing a Samurai born into the Scorpion Clan, however being somewhat of a newb, can a scorpion clan member be a decent and honourable person and not a total dick in regards to political black mail etc?

FFG bought L5R from AEG, and there are no official plans to do anything but the LCG.

> can a scorpion clan member be a decent and honourable person and not a total dick in regards to political black mail etc?
Most Scorpion are passing honourable, at the very least by necessity of living within Rokugan and not constantly having reason to stab people in the back.

If you're a newb, I'd suggest playing Lion though. They're good for reinforcing a basic understanding of Bushido in practice.

Update in 2017, the game got bought by a new company

How do I handle minor clans and smiths? I have a player that wants to play a Tsi form the Oriole Clan. His motivation is he wants to follow Samurai to better understand how swords work and what swords go through during their lives so that he can attempt to make better swords.

I was also thinking lion, I forgot to mention my character wasn't set in stone thanks for the tip.

How popular is l5r currently?

See this thread that's already on page 8 with only 90 posts? Yeah Its not that popular. Most people have not heard of it.

It goes in waves. For awhile we had L5R generals that would fill up quick and go for a few days. With the FFG purchase, we have been in limbo for over a year so there is not much to talk about other than the usual Clan shitposting.

REMOVE MANTIS
REMOVE MANTIS

Courtiers do tend to get pressed into local service during war. Someone has to patrol the inner lands, push ashigaru around, keep an eye out for bandits, and all of that while the bushi are off playing war.

If wants those juicy Insight points he's going to have an Air in the 3-4 range as it is pretty efficient exp there. A 3 Reflexes and 3 Kyujutsu (18 exp total and would likely net him 13 Insight which is reasonably efficient Insight) is a minimal investment and turns a courtier into a passable archer.

That's a PC, rather than a common courtier.

>See this thread that's already on page 8 with only 90 posts? Yeah Its not that popular. Most people have not heard of it.

If the fanfags are not sleeping then the thread is constantly on the first page because of arguments like the "kill your lord honorably" one above. A spiderfags vs oldfags battle can make the thread go from zero to post limit within a day.

The problem is that fanfags are losing interest in the game because of the limbo FFG put it.

...

If I wanted to find not shitters to play on my game, where would I look? Any advice on filtering out baddies?

Just require every player to make a character and send it to you for approval. The self aware shitters will avoid you. The non self aware one s you can easily detect and filter out yourself. Then tell everyone who passed that those characters one be used and they have to make new ones with you and the rest of the group. This will normally catch the sneaky shitters as they wont want to budge on certain things and it will be obvious they will be a problem.

Done.

It's not even a proper general. If it had some nice links up top and a solid idea for discussion it'd be doing better. As it was, the OP could've just RTFM