Legend of the Five Rings General

You don't get Center Stance bonus in the first round (Assessment) because CS bonus goes for the following round only.

Alright, I'm a lurker and new player to the setting (havent been able to find any games, if anyone knows a good direction to look I'd be grateful.)

I've been batting around the idea of working on a home brew clan and looking for some input on the concept.

My latest iteration is a minor Clan offshoot of the Dragon devoted to honoring the will of their founder (insert worldview/goal of founder and their epic tale here) which translates into a philosophical or spiritual predisposition even in their martial Bushi, almost always through a lens of reverence for the dead.

There's some basic fluff, now for the mechanical goal: I'll speak plainly here, I personally don't like mechanics that (I feel) overly restrict what a player can do with their general class. For example I don't like that if you want a really good duelist then you go Kakita, period. (yes I know there's a mathematical discussion about that right now but the fact its a stretch to accomplish makes me feel this example is valid) If a players a Bushi and wants a sick duelist and dumps the exp into it then I think that should work. Now the player is going to have to deal with the consequences of that focus but I dont like feeling like its locked away from them. (I do have no issue with them needing to put in some extra work exp wise than the Kakita to reach the same heights though, just not enough that its no longer even something you'd consider).

Obviously I don't want players running around being fantastic at everything, so the bonuses need to be limited to the particular thing you want to focus in, yet letting you decide just what that is. This makes me feel some of the ranks should target a players chosen skill and give 'x' effect.

I'll admit though mechanics are my weakest subject. Thoughts?

Also I'll likely post some Clan fluff and Lore later.

>>new player
>>Homebrew clan

Don't.

As a general aside...what is with Veeky Forums's boner for Minor Clans?

They're easy ways to create custom factions that don't really step on anything else in the setting's toes. Monk Temples would be too, but they've got a much more rigid theme in the Brotherhood itself, and ronin otokodate don't really have the oomph of an entire clan.

You can't really home brew a Great Clan without dramatically changing the setting, but Minor Clans come and go without changing much. They're also a nice size of fluff/crunch parcel. You could also do a new monk temple, for example, but there isn't much there to do.

On the second part, it gives me a way to present other players with new tools to play the game and create stories (in this case the idea is to give some thought to how we as the living translate and act on what we see as the wills of those who came before us, and just how personal and flawed, or not, that can be) they haven't before.

Also see As for the first part; I'm aware my status as an inexperienced player (something I hope to fix) turns this into a generally bad idea. Hence why I'm looking to the more experienced L5R community.

What ever happened to Marta Mora?

I've seen it interpreted both ways (an AEG FAQ was the first time I saw Assessment getting the CS bonus), but it doesn't really change much only 2 pieces of info instead of 5.

That is literally what the Kitsu Sodan Senzo, Moto Death Priests, and Bat Clan are all about. Read the setting.

In the sense they each have death as a thematic element? Other than that all three are pretty damn different. The Kitsu Sodan Senzo are all about actually communing with the deceased and even summoning them, which you could say is a way of directly keeping them alive, or known. The Moto Death Priests are mechanically all about wielding death and fluff wise about literally following minor death gods. The bat Clan I admit I know the smallest about, as I haven't dropped money on Secrets of The Empire, though what I've been able to dredge up shows them mechanically to be a summoner class and fluff wise to focus more on Kami and Spirits.

What I'm after isn't any of these, as that would be redundant. I'm after fluff wise trying to tackle the issue of whether the living are even capable of representing the wills of the dead, or if there's inevitable co-opting, and all that jazz. Seeing as the vast majority of Rokugan doesn't have the Sondan Senzo's ability to just ring them up (a rather difficult procedure regardless if I'm remembering it right.)

Mechanically I'm also not after any of those three, but in allowing players to achieve a single chosen specialization of their choice to work towards without being locked out by faction-specific mechanics, though the cost is that it'll take a little more work.

I understand that something like this isn't necessary, for christ's sake if someone wants their drama of figuring out what their deceased dad truly wanted and what that means for them on a tough-as-nails tank they can do it using a Crab Bushi, but like most Minor Clans I'm trying to develop something that provides its own hooks on such a thing.

Clearly I think the lesson here is I just need to present a third or fourth draft if I want advice so there's an actual clear focus for discussion.

Togashi's sight of different futures worked better the less he personally get involved in any particular event. Everything he did was geared towards giving the second day of thunder the best chance of success vs Fu Leng possible (because that's when he dies / his sight stops), but he had to work from the angle of seeing oncoming futures that don't work, then meddling in ways that created holes in his predictions, hoping none of those holes would break the rest of working future(s) he saw.

Because the setting keeps getting rid of minor clans. The setting seems more interesting with a few big factions and then a lot of smaller ones in between.

Nothing?

Special snowflake.

>>Translate and act on what we see as the wills of those who came before us...

Asking the ancestors what the want is pretty sure fire way of accomplishing that. Which is one of the primary functions of the Sodan Senzo and was how the Bat got their Minor Clan (Naseru was sad his sister was dead and found out this creepy Mantis guy could retrieve spirits from Meido and got him to retrieve Tsudao who reassured him that he wasn't a total one-eyed douche-nozzle).

>Special snowflake
>Clans that don't have much influence on anything

Did you see the pre-edited Butterfly School? Shit was 1e Kakita Artisan levels of broken.

How so?

It gave +1 Void, something only Monk or Monk-like schools do. I believe the family bonus was Awareness which is very synergistic with their R3 technique of breaking the game.

The Rank 3 Technique was ridiculous. For a trivial roll you could lock out most characters from the raise system, forever, as it lacked a duration. Awareness/Iaijutsu (Assessment) vs Void x5 with raises adding to the the number extra raises inflicted means with a TN of 25 you are locking Void 3 characters completely out of raising. Incidentally using the tech triggers off entering Center Stance so it even gets to flip the bird at initiative. In doing so it outright neuters anyone it faces. Shit is well beyond the ken of Great Clan Techs, much less a Minor Clan.

Wow that's horribly written.

To be fair, I the author's didn't actually understand what they had created, rather than setting out to deliberately create some kind of god-clan.

Definitely not denying thats a way to go about it, but my point is that kind of tale (where you have the luxury of ringing up grandpa to actually ask him just what in the hell he wanted to do with the family farm) is precisely what I'm trying to not get at since, as you point out, is what the sodan already do. Tales like their's are the fantastical adventures of Major clans, and the Bat clans quest is of similar scope and singular in its happening, though it is a minor clan.

I guess what I'm is what happens to everyone else, the people who cant just hook into resurrecting those whom are gone, and even more, what happens when the person whose gone was so present, so larger than life, that they inspired you so deeply you devoted yourself to bringing their vision to life. Then what happens to that after time. Definitely something I want to work on, and I'll do a better job of actually presenting it clearly.

You get to be a "proper" samurai without the stigma of being a ronin, with super special secret techniques, and still get to be outside of the established setting and be unique.

People seem to miss that the theme of the game is that samurai are rather confined, and that freedom is represented by the shit life of a ronin.

So how large a role does war play in your games? Do you ever run mass battles? How did it go?

So what are your PCs' favored hobbies Veeky Forums? I GM but between my players we have a pillowbook author, an artist, and a shugenja who slums it on the streets as a fortune teller to let off steam and acquire rumors

Poetry. Just constant haiku at every opportunity.

I started doing this in a different game, because another PC got cursed to speak only in rhymes. My PC found that impossibly funny and spent the rest of the session either mimicking their rhyme speak or speaking in other forms of poetry. I did combat haiku for a while there.

Its actually pretty challenging. I may just suck at literature though

...

I play a humble roning, so he practices the suitably humble art of wood carving.

1) That was a homebrew minor clan in the works.

2) No homebrew or setting minor clan will ever approach the special snowflake status of the major clans. See: Spider Clan

One of the constant issues with the roll and keep system has been that most weapons are objectively useless aside from flavor. Why would you ever use a weapon that is identical to another in every single way except that it deals less damage? At least with knives and shit, you get the argument that they are small and easily hidden, but with polearms it's hard to argue for using anything but a bisento. Not to mention that even with mastery abilities added to incentivize taking skills, those are completely unevenly distributed. Just look at kenjutsu and polearms, for example. Kenjutsu gets a flat +1k0 to sword damage. Polearms gets the exact same bonus, but only against significantly larger or mounted opponents. One would think that a situational bonus should give larger benefits than one that applies all the time, but apparently not.

You spend so much time making all these diverse techniques, kiho, spells, schools, kata and whatnot, only to make the weapons bland as fuck, aside from the bows for some reason. It feels like they wanted a simplified system, but instead of going the route of games like Qin or Exalted, where damage is universal and what separates weapons are tags, they went the other way and made weapons identical save for damage. But while tags are generally more subjective in power, damage is objectively better or worse.

So my group generally uses some house ruled weapon tags and maneuvers to diversify them and give them more of a purpose. Spears, chain weapons and polearms generally have the Keep At Bay maneuver that imposes attack penalties on opponents with shorter weapons. Weapons that break get the Twist maneuver that lets you break them off inside an opponent's body. Spears get the Defensive tag, adding Armor against charging opponents while in either defensive stance. Knives are faster than larger weapons. A bisento, ono or similar top heavy weapon gets the Unwieldy tag that makes them more powerful, but also reduces armor TN after a swing.

To be fair, with the whole "winner gets to decide the storyline" aspect of the TCG, a lot of the fluff is essentially glorified fanfiction. I tend to pretend a lot of stuff didn't happen, or at least happened in a way that made a lot more sense.

>a lot of the fluff is essentially glorified fanfiction
On a certain scale, that's definitely true. When AEG allowed the community to design a card by committee, and the community's collective voting pattern spat out a Mantis Clan Kenku Ninja Pirate, that was shitty fanfic. When the Mad Ronin had a tournament to be brought back to sanity and the nezumi won? Shitty fanfic. But the large scale stuff? That was L5R being deformed by the need to keep shovelling tournaments and story prizes out there. The fans' portion of blame for that amounts to existing and paying money for cardboard rectangles.

Either way, it boils down to a lot of the fluff being retarded. Rokugan is definitely one of those settings where I feel the GM absolutely has to exercise some recidivist tendencies in order to not have it all be completely illogical and stupid.

Maybe. Depends if I'm playing a dumb character or not.

Also, for Veeky Forums: Have you ever made a glorious save against impossible odds?

Additional Information:
>Be Scorpion, Shosuro Family
>Be part of party because kicked out from home and in the area at the time (Black Sheep, Cast Out)
>Not many chances to be a courtier, because we accidentally stumbled into a War campaign
>Bayushi vs Shosuro in a battle for supremacy
>Shosuro (most of the higher-ups) have been consumed by the Nothing
>Other clans backing this fight on both sides
>On the side of Bayushi because Emperor, Loyalty, and Team.
>Also only competent team diplomat.

>Fast forward to the session
>Part of the army as military advisor, about to defend Kyuden Bayushi
>Six bottles of sake down due to trying to calm some people through Dutch Comfort (fail)
>Emperor makes a speech about taking the enemy down
>Break into laughter due to fighting the enemy while one such "enemy" (he met with us already) in the ranks
>Emperor is not amused
>Use Etiquette to feign behaviour due to alcohol (damn well smell like it): 10k5 = 44
>Emperor's Etiquette: 10k10 = 43
>Get off scot-free (sure honour took a hit by -6 (probably via GM Fiat), but at least it's not Sudoku-worthy)
>Have friend drag me off of the crowd
>Half the party is OOCly laughing their arses off, while the other half was just shaking their heads, wondering why the Scorpion made a fool of themselves in front of THE EMPEROR
>I remind everyone that I have the "Rumourmonger" disadvantage:

Roll a Willpower check of a TN of (Individual with the highest Glory Rank, x5). If you fail, you are compelled to creat a rumour about them.

>If I stayed there a little longer, I would've had to roll Willpower on a Honour 6, Glory 4, Status 10 Emperor.
>I'd probably fail, and create a horrible rumour that could spell my execution/seppuku.

>mfw I revealed this to the party
>mfw that worked

Rumourmongering, Go, writing stories, drinking tea, drinking alcohol, lechery, infiltration, be an asshole in court.

Such is the life of a courtier.

>Rokugan is definitely one of those settings where I feel the GM absolutely has to exercise some recidivist tendencies in order to not have it all be completely illogical and stupid.
Revisionist? True. You really have to Rokugan Your Way to avoid whichever stuff personally offends you - but exactly what that is varies per person.

>Emperor is not amused
>Use Etiquette to feign behaviour due to alcohol (damn well smell like it): 10k5 = 44
>Emperor's Etiquette: 10k10 = 43
If you don't call for raises, the result is only the most basic success. I wouldn't expect anything lethal, but "Scot free" is stretching it when you laugh at the head honcho.

As someone who plays the CCG, which is what got me into the game, I take offense to that

One of the big draws to me was when my friend told me that winning tournaments influenced the storyline. I was like holy shit really? That's pretty fuckin cool

You're not wrong that it messes up the canon but in reality, who exactly goes exactly per-canon in every L5R game they play? The beauty of RPG's is that if you don't like something, don't use it. The endless notching in this General about card players ruining the game is on my opinion kinda like beating a dead horse. Yes we get it, a couple retards who put in some stupid shit can cause some breakdowns in the story. Luckily you can ignore it if you want

>who exactly goes exactly per-canon in every L5R game they play?
When wrestling a herd of monkeys into a playgroup online, you better believe I prefer keeping canon straight.

You're not wrong
But you also have to consider L5R was invented before the Internet

To be honest, many players are not exactly fans of the pre-tournaments canon either.

I, for one, don't mind stuff like the Spider Clan at all because I think the story has been shit since its inception, so nothing can surprise me.

>super special secret techniques

Except if its properly balanced (which it should be, we all know there are exceptions) it really is just a way to help you mechanically focus a character with tools you don't otherwise have.

>outside of the established setting

Except your not? Your Samurai, you are expected to behave like one and be held accountable to all the same expectations, failures thereof, and intrigue. Except you dont have the weight of a major clan backing you up, so plenty of other samurai will (very politely) look down on you. Not to mention the book litterally instruct how to and encourage you make your own minor clans, so if anything they are confirmed established in the setting, if not canon lore. Don't get me wrong user, I'm not saying people don't use these things to live their special snowflake dreams, but you're painting with an awful broad brush.

Hello there fellow samurais !

For my next game I want to do an actual scene of Tea Ceremony with lots of plot, diplomacy, politics and discussion. That means making tea the way it's done and serving it the right way while being in roleplay all the way.

but I do have a problem : I don't know how it is 'properly done' : how do you make the tea ? For how long ? How do you serve it ? How do you drink it ?

Fucking.

When you're a Crab bushi with the lecherous disadvantage, you have to blow off steam somehow.

When you're a courtier none of those are hobbies, they are most serious duties.

Nah, I think being an asshole might just be recreational.

Ok Veeky Forumsuys,

I got a lore question...Did Osano Wo ever fight a epic monster? Any giant serpent, multi-headed dragon or a kraken?

A noble pursuit. Make sure any bastard ronin you father will know that they have the blood of Hida in their veins and should come to try their luck in Crab provinces. Maybe a 20 goblin winter will be declared and they can die nobly in the Shadowlands trying to join the clan that they by all rights should have been in from birth.

Well, he did apparantly debate Togashi, and those debates were "legendary" so he did fight one epic Dragon.
But yeah, he might have fought something epic when he waged war on the trolls?

It happened after he had ascended to Fortunehood, but he had an incident where he actually returned to Ningen-do to take the field alongside a bunch of Crab fighting, I think, the Lion. And then either Bishamon or some other fortune partial to the Lion took the field on their side, and the fighting was so titanic that all the mortal soldiers just left the field in awe and horror, conflict forgotten.

But the game itself does give alternate canons with Imperial Histories.

Personally I never do anything without assuming the Toturi lineage never died out - otherwise its just madness.

Well, in my games I assume Amaterasu was actually a good and responsible mother and as such she sucker punched Onnotangu when he tried to eat their children - otherwise it is just ridiculous.

I always assume they just dig up a Hantei heir from the otomo/seppun or the like, after the day of thunder, as is procedure. Or Togashi has one hidden somewhere. Or produce one that's been hidden/married off into Doji/Akodo/Hida/you get the point. Each to his own!

>Each to his own!
>Not fighting to the death in honorable duels over who is more right on a matter purely of opinion

Do you even Crane?

But user, Crane are always right

Though, that makes me wonder, can someone develop a bad reputation from being too trigger happy with challenging people into duels?

Yes. You'll get some grudging respect for your abilities if you consistently win, but people will think you're a belligerent asshole if you act like every hour is duel o'clock.

>but people will think you're a belligerent asshole if you act like every hour is duel o'clock.
How about a young Kakita out to try and desperately prove themselves so they can make it into the Kenshinzen? Losing sight of the greater nature of the family and their duties for their obsessive focus on being not just the best duelist but being KNOWN as the best duelist?

Because that's an idea I wanted to play sometime. Flawed gloryhound Kakita going about his dreams all the wrong way.

That sounds pretty good to me. Extra points if he's on a musha shugyo while rampaging around Rokugan challenging everything ever. He'd either learn some humility over time or die.

So what are some other recommended lore fixes by Veeky Forums apart from apparently avoiding Iweko stuff?

>"You looked at me weird!"

>"I wasn't even looking at you!"

>"So you call me a liar then?"

This would be real easy to get into constant duels with honestly.

Weeeell. Everyone has their own personal thing they think is a step too far, but avoiding everything ever with the spider is at the minimum a good step. Another would be to consider that yeah, the events that happen in the 12th century are maybe good plot hooks, but whatever you do, don't have half a dozen of the most destructive wars ever take place in almost nonstop order in a few decades. Spread that shit out over the century.
Me, I would just say start around where the timeline of first edition begins, before the scorpion clan coup, and work your way out after that to figure out what elements if any from later things that happen you want to incorporate in one shape or another.

spread that shit out over the centuries, rather. Many centuries.

Speaking of minor clans, how do you guys handle having minor clan characters who want to be full courtiers? Are the only options to have them go find a major clan to sponsor them? Any info on what major clans do this the most?

Cranes are asshole elitists.

t. Lion

I use the Spider but I ran a two year game that saw the PCs involved at the end of the Destroyer War and the game set a century later has them altered from where they were going in the lore.

I decided to run with impossibly zealous Imperial loyalist angles with them that got ignored in the actual game, make more than ONLY the Susumu remain untainted, and generally bastardized them into something different based on how the PCs radically altered the setting there

We have fun, at least.

Kill everything past the Four Winds Period. Some of the old guard will say go even farther and kill everything after the Second Day of Thunder, but really outside of Shizue stupidity the Hidden Emperor was not THAT bad, especially when compared to Megatron...err Iuchiban's return and everything to do with Iweko dynasty.

>The Kenshinzen notices you and approaches the fence

Take your iaijutsu elsewhere you silver haired, grease-stained fop.

I like how in Imperial Histories, the Champions of the Sapphire Throne historical setting outlines how it would be like with Toturi Emperors instead of Iweko.

And its basically "all good in the 'hood".

When doing games, if people really want the later stuff, I always set it after the current timeline but before an assumed destination of Champions of the Sapphire Throne.

>Crane are always right
Only Hoturi would be so full of himself to believe that.

More accurate to say when the Crane are wrong they have the Kakita to fix that, barring the opposition having a surprisingly gifted duelist. Contrary to popular belief the Kakita are not undefeatable and if you're from another clan you know that going in and plan to bring the right backup.

It's okay, you are absolutely correct.

t. Yasuki

...

When offending someone can result in a duel, blood feuds, etc, I'd say being an asshole is a professional skill.

...

>I always assume they just dig up a Hantei heir from the otomo/seppun or the like
Shame to undermine the dedicated preparation of the Scorpion Clan Coup.

Well, they are no longer Hantei after the ritual of abdication, and then is reversed when the ritual is reversed. I mean, they've been doing this for a millenia, there would be a crazy amount of Hantei descendants in the imperial families. The amount of people who would have to be quietly killed in the imperial families is simply staggering, not something you can get away with quietly. And ofcourse Shoju was influenced by Ambition and working against the clock with the prophecy. I don't think it would discount the dedicated preparations at all.

There's a certain point in the timeline where you really, really can't avoid the stupid shit without massively rewriting the entire timeline. It's not a case of just leaving out a small group or single events, the entire setting is heavily affected.

The Minor Clan Diplomat alt path puts the weight of the Minor Clan Alliance behind you, and putting that on top of an mc that already has a courtier school is fairly reasonable. If you need to seek great clan patronage on top of that, the Mantis are typically willing to help out.

Be careful when asking the Mantis for help. They've grown accustomed to eating minor clans and aren't afraid to abuse every advantage they can get to that end.

>They've grown accustomed to eating minor clans and aren't afraid to abuse every advantage they can get to that end.

Well, when the alternative is to let them fall to the Spider ...

Sometimes when you're a youngun, you make bad choices. One of those is falling in love with, and impregnating, a Togashi monk at the Topaz Championship.

It's like with the Olympics - you get all those talented people together who live strict, regimented lives, give them an opportunity to perform at their best and have some privacy after, you're gonna see a lot of sparks fly.

Also maybe a Hida-Goju was made.

Now the recreational activity of geisha diving is calmed down since he's married.

Where's the minor clan Diplomat alt path?

I was thinking the Mantis are probably most likely to take on minor clan students.

But I don't know of many minor clans that have a courtier school, if any, unless I'm missing things. The only one I can think of is the Bee Clan, which is a highly obscure one.

It is rather a limited set of options for the poor minor clan courtier.

What I've done is homebrewed up a minor clan, the Ant Clan, whose only real main purpose is to provide a dojo for minor clan samurai to learn how to not be total shitheads in court. I have it as an option for players to take with the assumption that the Ant are happy to take any minor clan samurai.

Isn't Suzume like all diplomat all the time. Of course it was eaten by the spider.

Also, I thought Dragonfly was diplomatic s gate keepers to true dragon lands?

There's a reason why courtier schools are rare in minor clans, and it's simply that such small clans really don't have any political power they can bring to bear, and are usually small enough that they'd be easily overrun by bandits if they didn't focus on being able to fight. Minor clan Shugenja get a pass because it's such a special ability that wasting it would be stupid, but there's just really not a lot of room for courtiers when you barely have the opportunity to enter court and live isolated from any major military.

The Suzume is a bushi clan that can storytell.

The Dragonfly is a shugenja clan that can foresee the future to bullshit their way through court.

Suzume are bushi with a secondary focus on being friendly and outgoing, and Tonbo are shugenja, although they do have a strong social focus with their technique.

How accurate is Divination in Rokugan usually? I've considered playing a Tonbo before the future telling angle for court sounds like a lot of fun.